This post is a follow-up to one I did back in February, wherein I argued that Jephthah (full story here), while being an idiot for making a rash vow, did not commit the abomination of human sacrifice by offering up his daughter as a burnt offering.
(You can now apologize for not reading that post, and then go read it.)
I won’t recapitulate my whole argument here, but here’s the punch line: Jephthah’s daughter was dedicated to the Lord, for service in the tabernacle, in some capacity which precluded her from marrying and raising up descendants for her father. Thus the sorrow over her virginity.
But, in order for my thesis to hold true, a couple of things need to be at least weakly established:
- There were women who served in some capacity at the tabernacle.
- These women were unmarried. (And were perhaps forbidden to marry.)
So let’s take these points one at a time. First, were there women who served at the tabernacle? Yes.
Now, I have to point out that I’d read the two references on this numerous times and somehow completely missed the first one and barely noticed the second one. And I’ve read the Old Testament a half-dozen times. So don’t feel bad if you’ve missed one or both. First, we have Exodus (missed by me mostly because the section it’s in is among the more mind-numbing passages in all of Scripture):
Exodus 38:8 (ESV)
8 He made the basin of bronze and its stand of bronze, from the mirrors of the ministering women who ministered in the entrance of the tent of meeting.
So I guess those ladies weren’t particularly given to vanity, because they gave up their mirrors for the sake of the Tabernacle.
(Show of hands, please. Did anybody else reading this ever take note of it? I missed it in at least six read-throughs, two go-rounds with an audio Bible, and listening to verse-by-verse teaching through Exodus. Missing it actually took effort.)
And the other reference, which spurred this post, and which I’d noticed but not dwelled on before, is this:
1 Samuel 2:22 (ESV)
22 Now Eli was very old, and he kept hearing all that his sons were doing to all Israel, and how they lay with the women who were serving at the entrance to the tent of meeting.
So that’s two solid references to women serving at the Tabernacle. Now, I do have to admit that both references are to them serving at the entrance of the Tabernacle, not in it. Still, they’re somehow attached to it.
But were these married women? I have only one argument here, and it has to do with the amorous activities of Eli’s sons, Hophni and Phinehas. Because they were evidently fishing in the company pond. And here’s my main point:
If the women were married, Hophni and Phinehas would have incurred a death sentence for adultery.
Now, of course, they were committing adultery, or at least Phinehas was, because he was married. So wouldn’t he have been liable for the death penalty in this regard? Well, I’m not certain. The Law seems to only prescribe it in the case of a man seducing another man’s wife.
Deuteronomy 22:22 (ESV)
22 "If a man is found lying with the wife of another man, both of them shall die, the man who lay with the woman, and the woman. So you shall purge the evil from Israel.
It’s fair to point out that the events of early 1 Samuel, we’re just getting out of the period of the Judges, and it was a very compromised time. Hophni and Phinehas were abusing their positions as priests in more than one way (taking more than their share of the sacrificial meat). And who was going to bring them to justice? They were pretty much in charge.
Still, I think that if these were married women, there would’ve been more of a stink raised about it. Jealous husbands probably wouldn’t have taken it sitting down. I’m not going to pretend this is anything like a rock-solid case, but it’s at least persuasive to me.
And just in case anyone’s forgotten, my whole point here was to at least raise the possibility that when Jephthah spoke of sacrificing (or dedicating) his daughter to the Lord, there may have been precedent for young ladies being dedicated to Tabernacle service.
And that’s pretty much as far as I can take the argument. There were women who served at the Tabernacle, and they were (from all appearances) unmarried. It would have been really helpful if the Law described more about how these women were chosen for this duty, but it seemed to dwell rather more on the duties of the men.
(If anyone has a reference I’ve missed, please enlighten me. I may have to call Steve Gregg about this one.)
BTW, I purposely neglected the case of Anna (Luke 2), who lived at the Temple as a widow from a young age. I think she might’ve been a special case.