Meditation #3 -- Katie Marchant -- 2/11/07

Because I couldn’t find something in Agamemnon that reminded me of something else I researched the sacrifice of daughters and the most similar sacrifice is from the Bible. In Judges chapter 11, verses 29-40 a man named Jephthah vows to God that he will sacrifice the first person who comes out to greet him if he returns home victorious from the war against the Ammonites. When Jephthah returns home after decimating the Ammonites the first person to come out and greet him is his only child, a daughter. He was devastated and did not want to go through with his vow to God but his daughter told him that he had to and all she requested was two months to spend with her friends before Jephthah sacrificed her. Her father agreed and after the two months she returned to her father and he performed the sacrifice.

The similarities between the story of the sacrifice of Jephthah’s daughter and the sacrifice of Iphigenia include that their fathers sacrificed them to a god, similar circumstances; both of the fathers needed the help of a higher being in warfare, Jephthah with the Ammonites and in Agamemnon with appeasing Artemis for better winds sailing to Troy to defeat the Trojans and retrieve Helen, and also the fact that neither of the daughters fought their impending sacrifice. One of the differences is that in the Judges story we do not know how Jephthah’s wife reacted to the sacrifice of her only daughter while in Agamemnon we know that Clytemnestra was upset enough to murder her husband in retailiation.

http://www.gospelhall.org/bible/bible.php?passage=Judges+11&search=&ver1=esv&ver2=&commentary=&submit=Search