I suddenly remembered the story of Jephthah's daughter, or rather, the way the Watchtower interprets it.
The story can be found in Judges 11, from verse 29.
Now the story loosely goes like this; Jephthah wants to go against the Ammonites and - as is par for the course - slay them all. To do this, he tells God that if He grants him victory, the first living thing to greet him when he returns shall be a burnt offering to God. He does win, and of course - the first 'thing' to come and greet him is his only daughter, and he begrudgingly has to keep his promise to God and - after a mourning period - sacrifice her.
Now, the Watchtower teaching on this as I remember it from when I was growing up, is that Jephthah's daughter wasn't actually literally sacrificed as a burnt offering (that would be too gruesome), but instead had to stay the rest of her life in God's temple, therefore for ever staying an unmarried virgin.
I decided to look further into this, and read the story in its entirety, as it can be found in the link above.
First of all, I found that the word used for 'burnt offering' in verse 31, `olah, is used to describe a burnt, animal sacrifice in most of the instances that I could find in the Bible (for instance when Abraham was to sacrifice Isaac).
After having found that, I did a simple Google search of "Jephthah's daughter", and found that there are many apologetics that share the view of the Watchtower on this one; that she wasn't in fact sacrificed, but more likely had to spend her life in the temple.
For instance this page:
Now the next question, the answer to which some say makes God guilty by endorsement, and Jephthah guilty in the main: Did he make this vow knowing that a human might come walking out of his house?
It is common for conservatives to appeal to Jeppie's ignorance in this case, and note that houses of the Biblical period typically had a stockyard that surrounded the house, so that Jephthah could very well have supposed that an animal would be the first thing to meet him.
This is supposed to be apologetic to the fact that Jephthah promised to sacrifice "whatever would come out of the house to greet him" when he came back, to show that he must have thought the most likely being to come toward him first, would be one of his animals.
But a thought just struck me:
If this is the case, and his daughter wasn't sacrificed as a burnt offering, but was simply sent to the temple for the rest of her life, does that mean that Jephthah had imagined possibly sending a sheep, goat or dog to God's temple to serve Him the rest of its life?
How could Jephthah know what would be the first to greet him when he came back? And if he didn't mean a burnt sacrifice would be made, did he then intend to send an animal to serve in the temple, if an animal happened to meet him first?
Probably a stupid question, but I wanted to know what your take on the story is based on this?