Judges 11

ENGWEBEnglish40 verses

1Now Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty man of valor, and he was the son of a prostitute. Gilead became the father of Jephthah.

2Gilead’s wife bore him sons. When his wife’s sons grew up, they drove Jephthah out, and said to him, “You will not inherit in our father’s house, for you are the son of another woman.”

3Then Jephthah fled from his brothers, and lived in the land of Tob. Outlaws joined up with Jephthah, and they went out with him.

4After a while, the children of Ammon made war against Israel.

5When the children of Ammon made war against Israel, the elders of Gilead went to get Jephthah out of the land of Tob.

6They said to Jephthah, “Come and be our chief, that we may fight with the children of Ammon.”

7Jephthah said to the elders of Gilead, “Didn’t you hate me, and drive me out of my father’s house? Why have you come to me now when you are in distress?”

8The elders of Gilead said to Jephthah, “Therefore we have turned again to you now, that you may go with us, and fight with the children of Ammon. You will be our head over all the inhabitants of Gilead.”

9Jephthah said to the elders of Gilead, “If you bring me home again to fight with the children of Ammon, and Yahweh delivers them before me, will I be your head?”

10The elders of Gilead said to Jephthah, “Yahweh will be witness between us. Surely we will do what you say.”

11Then Jephthah went with the elders of Gilead, and the people made him head and chief over them. Jephthah spoke all his words before Yahweh in Mizpah.

12Jephthah sent messengers to the king of the children of Ammon, saying, “What have you to do with me, that you have come to me to fight against my land?”

13The king of the children of Ammon answered to the messengers of Jephthah, “Because Israel took away my land, when he came up out of Egypt, from the Arnon even to the Jabbok, and to the Jordan. Now therefore restore that territory again peaceably.”

14Jephthah sent messengers again to the king of the children of Ammon;

15and he said to him, “Thus says Jephthah: Israel didn’t take away the land of Moab, nor the land of the children of Ammon,

16but when they came up from Egypt, and Israel went through the wilderness to the Red Sea, and came to Kadesh;

17then Israel sent messengers to the king of Edom, saying, ‘Please let me pass through your land;’ but the king of Edom didn’t listen. In the same way, he sent to the king of Moab; but he would not: and Israel stayed in Kadesh.

18Then they went through the wilderness, and went around the land of Edom, and the land of Moab, and came by the east side of the land of Moab, and they encamped on the other side of the Arnon; but they didn’t come within the border of Moab, for the Arnon was the border of Moab.

19Israel sent messengers to Sihon king of the Amorites, the king of Heshbon; and Israel said to him, ‘Please let us pass through your land to my place.’

20But Sihon didn’t trust Israel to pass through his border; but Sihon gathered all his people together, and encamped in Jahaz, and fought against Israel.

21Yahweh, the God of Israel, delivered Sihon and all his people into the hand of Israel, and they struck them. So Israel possessed all the land of the Amorites, the inhabitants of that country.

22They possessed all the border of the Amorites, from the Arnon even to the Jabbok, and from the wilderness even to the Jordan.

23So now Yahweh, the God of Israel, has dispossessed the Amorites from before his people Israel, and should you possess them?

24Won’t you possess that which Chemosh your god gives you to possess? So whoever Yahweh our God has dispossessed from before us, them will we possess.

25Now are you anything better than Balak the son of Zippor, king of Moab? Did he ever strive against Israel, or did he ever fight against them?

26While Israel lived in Heshbon and its towns, and in Aroer and its towns, and in all the cities that are along by the side of the Arnon, three hundred years; why didn’t you recover them within that time?

27I therefore have not sinned against you, but you do me wrong to war against me. May Yahweh the Judge be judge this day between the children of Israel and the children of Ammon.”

28However the king of the children of Ammon didn’t listen to the words of Jephthah which he sent him.

29Then Yahweh’s Spirit came on Jephthah, and he passed over Gilead and Manasseh, and passed over Mizpah of Gilead, and from Mizpah of Gilead he passed over to the children of Ammon.

30Jephthah vowed a vow to Yahweh, and said, “If you will indeed deliver the children of Ammon into my hand,

31then it shall be, that whatever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, it shall be Yahweh’s, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.”

32So Jephthah passed over to the children of Ammon to fight against them; and Yahweh delivered them into his hand.

33He struck them from Aroer until you come to Minnith, even twenty cities, and to Abelcheramim, with a very great slaughter. So the children of Ammon were subdued before the children of Israel.

34Jephthah came to Mizpah to his house; and behold, his daughter came out to meet him with tambourines and with dances. She was his only child. Besides her he had neither son nor daughter.

35When he saw her, he tore his clothes, and said, “Alas, my daughter! You have brought me very low, and you are one of those who trouble me; for I have opened my mouth to Yahweh, and I can’t go back.”

36She said to him, “My father, you have opened your mouth to Yahweh; do to me according to that which has proceeded out of your mouth, because Yahweh has taken vengeance for you on your enemies, even on the children of Ammon.”

37She said to her father, “Let this thing be done for me. Leave me alone two months, that I may depart and go down on the mountains, and bewail my virginity, I and my companions.”

38He said, “Go.” He sent her away for two months: and she departed, she and her companions, and mourned her virginity on the mountains.

39At the end of two months, she returned to her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had vowed. She was a virgin. It was a custom in Israel

40that the daughters of Israel went yearly to celebrate the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in a year.

Commentary

11:1 Gileadite - So called, either from his father Gilead, or from the mountain, or city of Gilead, the place of his birth. Son of a harlot - That is, a bastard. And though such were not ordinarily to enter into the congregation of the Lord, Deut 23:2. Yet God can dispense with his own laws, and hath sometimes done honour to base - born persons, so far, that some of them were admitted to be the progenitors of the Lord Jesus Christ. And Gilead - One of the children of that ancient Gilead, Numb 32:1.

Chapter 11 This chapter gives as the history of Jephthah, another of Israel’s judges, and numbered among the worthies of the Old Testament, that by faith did great things (Heb. 11:32), though he had not such an extraordinary call as the rest there mentioned had. Here we have, I. The disadvantages of his origin (v. 1-3). II. The Gileadites’ choice of him to be commander-in-chief against the Ammonites, and the terms he made with them (v. 4–11). III. His treaty with the king of Ammon about the rights of the two nations, that the matter might be determined, if possible, without bloodshed (v. 12–28). IV. His war with the Ammonites, which he enters upon with a solemn vow (v. 29–31), prosecutes with bravery (v. 32), and ends with a glorious victory (v. 33). V. The straits he was brought into at his return to his own house by the vow he had made (v. 34–40).Verses 1-3 The princes and people of Gilead we left, in the close of the foregoing chapter, consulting about the choice of a general, having come to this resolve, that whoever would undertake to lead their forces against the children of Ammon should by common consent be head over all the inhabitants of Gilead. The enterprise was difficult, and it was fit that so great an encouragement as this should be proposed to him that would undertake it. Now all agreed that Jephthah, the Gileadite, was a mighty man of valour, and very fit for that purpose, none so fit as he, but he lay under three disadvantages:-1. He was the son of a harlot (v. 1), of a strange woman (v. 2), one that was neither a wife nor a concubine; some think his mother was a Gentile; so Josephus, who calls him a stranger by the mother’s side. An Ishmaelite, say the Jews. If his mother was a harlot, that was not his fault, however it was his disgrace. Men ought not to be reproached with any of the infelicities of their parentage or extraction, so long as they are endeavouring by their personal merits to roll away the reproach. The son of a harlot, if born again, born from above, shall be accepted of God, and be as welcome as any other to the glorious liberties of his children. Jephthah could not read in the law the brand there put on the Ammonites, the enemies he was to grapple with, that they should not enter into the congregation of the Lord, but in the same paragraph he met with that which looked black upon himself, that a bastard should be in like manner excluded, Deu. 23:2, 3. But if that law means, as most probably it does, only those that are born of incest, not of fornication, he was not within the reach of it. 2. He had been driven from his country by his brethren. His father’s legitimate children, insisting upon the rigour of the law, thrust him out from having any inheritance with them, without any consideration of his extraordinary qualifications, which merited a dispensation, and would have made him a mighty strength and ornament of their family, if they had overlooked his being illegitimate and admitted him to a child’s part, v. 2. One would not have thought this abandoned youth was intended to be Israel’s deliverer and judge, but God often humbles those whom he designs to exalt, and makes that stone the head of the corner which the builders refused; so Joseph, Moses, and David, the three most eminent of the shepherds of Israel, were all thrust out by men, before they were called of God to their great offices. 3. He had, in his exile, headed a rabble, v. 3. Being driven out by his brethren, his great soul would not suffer him either to dig or beg, but by his sword he must live; and, being soon noted for his bravery, those that were reduced to such straits, and animated by such a spirit, enlisted themselves under him. Vain men they are here called, that is, men that had run through their estates and had to seek for a livelihood. These went out with him, not to rob or plunder, but to hunt wild beasts, and perhaps to make incursions upon those countries which Israel was entitled to, but had not as yet come to the possession of, or were some way or other injured by. This is the man that must save Israel. That people had by their idolatry made themselves children of whoredoms, and aliens from God and his covenant, and therefore, though God upon their repentance will deliver them, yet, to mortify them and remind them of their sin, he chooses to do it by a bastard and an exile.

CHAPTER 11Jud 11:1-3. Jephthah.1. Jephthah—"opener."son of an harlot—a concubine, or foreigner; implying an inferior sort of marriage prevalent in Eastern countries. Whatever dishonor might attach to his birth, his own high and energetic character rendered him early a person of note.Gilead begat Jephthah—His father seems to have belonged to the tribe of Manasseh (1Ch 7:14, 17).

11:1-11 Men ought not to be blamed for their parentage, so long as they by their personal merits roll away any reproach. God had forgiven Israel, therefore Jephthah will forgive. He speaks not with confidence of his success, knowing how justly God might suffer the Ammonites to prevail for the further punishment of Israel. Nor does he speak with any confidence at all in himself. If he succeed, it is the Lord delivers them into his hand; he thereby reminds his countrymen to look up to God as the Giver of victory. The same question as here, in fact, is put to those who desire salvation by Christ. If he save you, will ye be willing that he shall rule you? On no other terms will he save you.

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Translations8 · 5

AMHEVG ገለዓዳዊውም ዮፍታሔ ጽኑዕ ኃያል ሰው የጋለሞታ ሴትም ልጅ ነበረ። ገለዓድም ዮፍታሔን ወለደ። አማርኛ ENGNIV Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty warrior. His father was Gilead; his mother was a prostitute. English BCV ገለዓዳዊ ዮፍታሔ፥ ወዲ ሓንቲ ኣመንዝራ ሰበይቲ፥ ሓያል ጅግና ነበረ። ገለዓድ ድማ ንዮፍታሔ ወለደ። ትግርኛ GAZBIB Yiftaan Giil'aadichi loltuu jabaa ture; inni dubartii ejjituu tokko irraa dhalate, abbaan isaas “Giil'aad” jedhama ture. Afaan Oromoo BCV GIZ ወዮፍታሔ ገለአዳዊ ጽኑዕ ወኀያል ወወልደ ብእሲት ዘማ ውእቱ፡ ወወለደቶ ለዮፍታሔ ለገላአድ። giz GAZGAZ Yiftaan Giil'aadichi loltuu jabaa ture; inni dubartii ejjituu tokko irraa dhalate, abbaan isaas “Giil'aad” jedhama ture. Afaan Oromoo BCV aksum ገለዓዳዊ ዮፍታሔ፥ ወዲ ሓንቲ ኣመንዝራ ሰበይቲ፥ ሓያል ጅግና ነበረ። ገለዓድ ድማ ንዮፍታሔ ወለደ። ትግርኛ AMHNIV ገለዓዳዊው ዮፍታሔ ኀያል ጦረኛ ነበረ፤ አባቱ ገለዓድ ነበር፤ እናቱም ጋለሞታ ነበረች። አማርኛ