The Bible as Mirror: Trump, Jephthah, and Vows

I write this only one day after President Donald Trump pulled the US out of the Paris Climate Agreement which had been agreed to by 195 nations and ratified by 148 of those. We now join Syria, Nicaragua, and the Holy See as the sole outliers to the agreement. Syria could hardly sign while its country was self-destructing in civil war, Nicaragua did not sign, citing inadequate punishments for nations that failed to meet their stated goals (though the president of the country vowed to make Nicaragua 90% clean energy dependent within 15 years), while the Holy See did not sign because it was not officially a member of the broad organization that arranged the agreement. A spokesperson for the Vatican said that they were in the process of joining in order to sign the document. The US withdrew because of right wing idiocy, a lack of any real scientific knowledge or acceptance of genuine science as the basis for decision-making, and the vindictiveness of the 45th president of the US. In short, Trump vowed during the campaign for president that he would withdraw, and he has kept that vow, despite many senior White House official’s attempts to dissuade him. Among those who reportedly hoped to stop this terrible tragedy were his daughter, Ivanka, the secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, among others. But the president’s stupid and arrogant vow topped all their arguments.

And that brings us to Jephthah, the warrior who made and fulfilled one of history’s most appalling vows. I say “history’s,” though I seriously doubt that much real history is involved in this story. Like many other stories from the folkloric book of Judges, we may look in vain for actual events to substantiate these grand and often grim tales. Still, they remain as significant and unforgettable parts of the Israelite cultural landscape and should be taken seriously as such. We find his account in Judges 11 and 12.

The story begins with Jephthah’s difficult childhood. “Now Jephthah was a formidable warrior, but the son of a prostitute” (Judges 11:1). The sentence implies that these two facts are closely related. Jephthah was from the first an outcast; his half- brothers, when they grow to maturity, throw Jephthah out of the family, claiming that he cannot inherit anything of father Gilead’s estate, “because you are the son of another woman” (Judges 11:2). As a result of his expulsion, Jephthah fled to the land of Tob, where “empty (trivial) men gathered around him with whom he went out (raiding).”

Donald Trump is not the son of a prostitute, and though he has been married three times, he appears devoted to his third wife, Melania, as devoted as any died-in-wool narcissist can be. He has, rather like Jephthah, spent the bulk of his life with people who, like him, act out of deep desires for power, wealth, and notoriety. He was, before his election, little more than a typically crass rich guy, a celebrity entrepreneur, with massive real estate holdings, a much-watched TV show about cutthroat business, and a sultan-like life style. He seemed content to live the rest of his days in similar fashion, recently reflecting that he “missed his old life,” and opining that the presidency was “harder than he thought.”

But, again like Jephthah, larger power came calling to Donald Trump. When the Israelites are threatened by an invasion of Ammonites from across the Jordan, those who ousted Jephthah from Israel now come crawling back and beg him to become their leader to defeat the enemies of the land. Similarly, a peculiar mixture of right wing elitists, Republican operatives, and even a few moderates, weary of Barak Obama, our first black president, and all he stood for, come crawling to Trump and beg him to run for president. Jephthah defeats the Ammonites, but only after Jephthah has made a fateful vow. He says to YHWH on the eve of the battle, “If you actually give the Ammonites into my hand, then whatever comes out of the doors of my house to greet me when I return peacefully from the Ammonites shall be YHWH’s, and I will offer it up as a burnt offering” (Judges 11:30). I have translated the potential sacrifice as “whatever,” rather than the usual “whoever” (NRSV), assuming that Jephthah in his wildest nightmares could not have imagined that the first thing rushing out to meet him would be his only daughter. The Hebrew could yield either reading, and the reckless Jephthah could well have intended a human sacrifice from the beginning, perhaps hoping that first from his house would be one of his dastardly half-brothers or at least a slave.

But, alas, his only daughter greets her father fresh from the victory with timbrel (a small drum or tambourine) and dancing. And Jephthah, in apparent horror, blames her for the tragedy. A typical narcissist, he wails, “Alas, my daughter! You have brought me very low; you have become the cause of great trouble for me” (Judges 11:35)! Now here is Trump all over. Whatever happens is never his fault; it is always someone else’s stupidity, someone else’s mistake, someone else’s error. He never makes mistakes; he never is in the wrong. But someone else needs to pay for his vows, for his decisions, no matter how wrong they may be. And Jephthah’s daughter pays with her very life, after she bewails her virginity for two months.

And now we, and the world, will pay for Trump’s rash vows about the environment, as he takes the US, the planet’s long-term worst polluter, out of the Paris Climate Agreement. We will, if Trump has his way, burn ever hotter on a warming planet, as Jephthah’s daughter was burned, due to the foolish vows of a foolish man. Thank God there are still many wiser heads who refuse to give up the struggle for a richer, cooler future: governors, senators, state legislators who have repudiated in clear language the president’s absurd choice. May we join them in opposition to the one who is fast becoming the very worst president in our long history.