Judges 11:34-36 — And Jephthah came to Mizpeh unto his house, and, behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances: and she was his only child; beside her he had neither son nor daughter. And it came to pass, when he saw her, that he rent his clothes, and said, Alas, my daughter! thou hast brought me very low, and thou art one of them that trouble me: for I have opened my mouth unto the Lord, and I cannot go back. And she said unto him, My father, if thou hast opened thy mouth unto the Lord, do to me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth; forasmuch as the Lord hath taken vengeance for thee of thine enemies, even of the children of Ammon.

The story of Jephthah and his daughter might be one of the saddest and most troubling in the Bible — but the story itself is not my focus today (if you don’t remember it, it’s in Judges 11).
What tugged at my attention was the relationship between Jephthah and his daughter (a non-Biblical source calls her Seila, “asked for”, and I’m going to use that if I need to). I think you can tell from Jephthah’s horror when he realizes that he has unintentionally committed to sacrifice his daughter that Seila was daddy’s little princess. Her reaction makes it clear that she felt that way too.
I’m not sure how the discussion provoked me to connect to Jephthah and Seila, but Myra and I were talking about her relationship (or lack of it) with her father. The thing is, it marked her for years — and although the resentment is gone, there might still be a little scarring.
There’s a counter example in the Bible too. For all his good qualities, King David wasn’t a great father. And he certainly didn’t treat his daughter — Tamar, who really was a princess — like his little princess. And when Amnon raped her, although David was “very angry” he did … nothing, and the consequences were devastating.
One way and another, Myra and I have seen a lot of the damage that can be caused when daddy doesn’t take care of his princess and show her how a real man should behave. When we worked for a while, in a little ministry at our church focused on children of divorce we saw a lot of impacts of absent fathers. Now don’t get me wrong — girls need their mommies too, and boys need both their parents. In fact all four relationships are critical, so that as those children grow up they know how they should be, and what they should expect from the opposite sex. But of all the four, that relationship between the princess and her daddy is the most precious, and the most irreplaceable. So I have a plea, as Father’s Day approaches… If you’re a daddy, and your princess is not getting all she needs from you, grab the opportunity to reconnect. The rewards will be greater than you can imagine!