or even remonstrated.”  Even further:  “The event gave rise to a popular custom annually observed by the maidens of Israel; Jephthah’s deed evidently met with universal approbation; it was regarded as praiseworthy piety; and indeed he could not have ventured to make his vow, had not human victims offered to Jehovah been deemed particularly meritorious in his time; otherwise he must have apprehended to provoke by it the wrath of God, rather than procure his assistance.  Nothing can be clearer or more decided....  The fact stands indisputable that human sacrifices offered to Jehovah were possible among the Hebrews long after the time of Moses, without meeting a check or censure from the teachers and leaders of the nation—­a fact for which the sad political confusion that prevailed in the period of the Judges is insufficient to account” (Leviticus, Part I., pp. 383-385; ed. 1867).  Kalisch further points out that the vow of Jephthah promises a human sacrifice; the Hebrew expression signifies “whoever comes forth” (see p. 383), and “the Hebrew words, in fact, absolutely exclude any animal whatever; they admit none but a human being, who alone can be described as going out of the house to meet somebody; for, though the restrictive usage of the East binds girls generally to the seclusion of the house, it seems to have been a common custom for Hebrew women to proceed and meet returning conquerors with music and rejoicing; and the sacrifice of one animal, an extremely poor offering after a most signal and most important success, would certainly not have been promised by a previous vow solemnly pronounced” (Ibid, pp. 385, 386).  Our commentator justly adds:  “From the tenour of the narrative it is manifest that the deed was no isolated case, but that human sacrifices were on emergencies of peculiar moment habitually offered to God, and expected to secure his aid.  One instance like that of Jephthah not only justifies, but necessitates, the influence of a general custom.  Pious men slaughtered human victims not to Moloch, nor to any other foreign deity, but to the national God Jehovah” (Ibid, p. 390).  “The second recorded instance of human sacrifices killed in honour of Jehovah forms a remarkable incident in the life of David” (Ibid, p. 390).  We read in 2 Sam. xxi. that God said that a famine then prevailing was on account of Saul and of his bloody house; that David desired to make an “atonement;” that seven men of Saul’s family were hanged “in the hill before the Lord;” that then they were buried, with Saul and Jonathan, “and, after that, God was intreated for the land.”  “It particularly concerns us to observe that the whole matter was, in the first instance, referred to Jehovah; that David was plainly informed of the intention of the Gibeonites of ‘hanging up’ the seven persons ‘before Jehovah’ as an ‘atonement;’ that he willingly surrendered them for that atrocity; that he evidently expected from that act a cessation of the famine; and that