The Vow as a Problem: Biblical and Gregorčič’s “Jephthah’s Oath”

Abstract

The paper on the poem “Jephthah’s Oath” by Slovene poet Simon Gregorčič (1844–1906) and the Biblical story it derives from begins with the finding that the motif of the non-transgressive vow is central to both, and this, at the same time, is the leading motif in Gregorčič’s poetry, marked by the poet’s clerical vow, the most decisive fact in his life. – This is followed by a comparison of the literary differences between the two works, above all the formation of Jephthah’s character. Jephthah in Gregorčič expresses guilt over the vow that makes him sacrifice his daughter, therefore the introduction of guilt into the re-narration of the Biblical story raises a question as to its tragic aspect. For the answer, the paper first turns to the European literary tradition, where it was Renaissance humanism that first associated Jephthah’s vow with tragic guilt and Jephthah’s sacrifice with, for example, Agamemnon’s. Renaissance humanism Hellenized the Biblical story by attaching the vow to the thought and making it an act, indeed limited by human knowledge, that was nevertheless deliberate. – In Christian theology, on the other hand, Jephthah’s vow leading to human sacrifice was not always perceived as a problem, and when it was, for example in St. Ambrosius, it was understood as a random impious gesture, so that the problem was concentrated on human sacrifice. It only became a problem in St. Augustine, who believed human sacrifice to be justified only when God commanded it, as it is exemplarily revealed in the story of Abraham. Yet he did not see it as a problem posed by the Scripture, which already judges it, but rather by the reader, and therefore, in accordance with the ambiguity of the text, allowed for two conflicting solutions. – The paper, on the other hand, attempts to demonstrate that the Biblical story itself, although without judging, somehow poses the vow as a problem, by means of the literary depiction of its transgressivness. By a literary reading, the study first calls to attention Jephthah’s character trait of uncertainty, or rather his searching for certainty in the contract as it is revealed in the narrative economy of the preliminary story, and then, on the premise of this trait, interprets the vow as a transgression, as a contract binding both the taker of the vow and God, making God an idol. This interpretation again is based in literary reading, this time concentrated on how the transgression of the vow is indicated by the two so-called “leading words”, which are repeated in the Hebrew original. – In closing, the paper returns to the conclusion of the initial comparison. It ascertains that Jephthah’s vow in Gregorčič, since it is explicitly described as thoughtless, has nothing to do with tragic guilt and, as a human act trying to bind God, ceases to be a problem. The problem now moves to the side of “heaven”, but such problematization, going directly against the grain of the Biblical bearing, has no solid ground, because it becomes lost in the oversentimentality of the poem’s final point. This only confirms and brings into focus the thesis of Janko Kos, that the problematization of the Bible in Slovenian literature begins no sooner than the 20^th century.