Judges 11:39

who did with her according to his vow The language is marked by a fine reserve, but the plain sense of it is that Jephthah offered the tragic sacrifice. Early Jewish interpretation took it to mean this; Talm. Ta-anith4 a (where the sacrifice is compared with that of Isaac and of Mesha's son); Midrash Bereshith Rab.§ 60; Jos., Ant.Judges 11:7; Judges 11:10. The same view was adopted by the Christian Fathers and Church writers (e.g. St Augustine, Opera, t. iii. 812 -procul dubio nihil aliud quam hominem cogitabit"; St Ambrose, Op.t. ii. 177, 178 and 281, 282; St Chrysostom, Op.t. ii. 147). In the Middle Ages, however, the natural meaning of the words was explained away, first by the Jewish commentators (e.g. by Ḳimḥi in loc. -he made a house for her and brought her into it, and she was there separated from mankind and from the ways of the world"), and following them by Christian interpreters. More recently it has been suggested that Jephthah dedicated the maiden to Jehovah as a virgin priestess or vestal in the local sanctuary; cf. Code of Ḫammurabi, § 181, which alleges the case of a father dedicating a votary to a god; Benzinger, Hebr. Arch.2 (1907), 360.

and she had not known man she being a virgin (for the Hebr. idiom see Driver, Tenses, § 159). The sacrifice, therefore, was all the greater; her father's race perished with her. Similarly in early Greek myths the human victim is nearly always a virgin; see Murray, Rise of the Gk. Epic, 121 123. Cf. Virgil, Aen.x. 518 520 (note juvenes).