Volume 2

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Life of Jesus Christ
said: "One day another also shall be sold by one of His
brethren. But He will pardon His penitent brethren and in
the time of fanline feed them with the Bread of Eternal
Life." On that same evening, some of the pagans outside
the city accosted the disciples very humbly, asking them
whether they too might hope to share in the great
Prophet's teachings. The disciples informed Jesus of their
desire, and He promised to go to them in the morning.
Jephte was the natural son of an idolatrous mother.
Driven by his father's legitimate children from Ramoth,
called also Maspha, he lived in the neighboring land of
Tob. He joined some military adventurers and led a life of
brigandage. His pagan wife died young, leaving him an
only daughter, who was beautiful and extraordinarily
talented, but rather given to vanity. Jephte was an exceedingly
rash, absolute, and determined man, eager for
victory, and strongly wedded to his own word. He was
more like a pagan hero than a Jew. He was an instrument
in the hand of God. Fired with desire to conquer and rule
the land from which he had been expelled, he made that
solemn vow to offer to the Lord as a holocaust the first
one that should come out of his own house on his victorious
return. He dreamed not that it would be his only
daughter; as for the rest of his family, he had no love for
them.
Jephte's vow was not pleasing to God; nevertheless He
permitted it, decreeing that its fulfillment should be a
chastisement upon both father and daughter and cut off
the posterity of the former from Israel. His daughter
would perhaps have been perverted by the success and
elevation of her father; but as it was, she did penance during
two months and died for God. It is probable that she
also influenced her father to a better way of thinking and
made him more faithful to God. The daughter went out
followed by a long train of maidens with songs and flutes
and timbals to meet her father. It was at a whole hour's