Judges11chapter 11

Judges 11:1-3

Gilead is both the man and the country, so the name in verse 1 does two jobs at once. The brothers expel him over inheritance rather than over conduct, since where a legitimate wife had sons the son of a strange woman had no claim on the estate. The vain men who gather to him in Tob are described with the same word used of the company Abimelech hired at 9:4, and they are the same kind of following David draws at Adullam in 1 Samuel 22:2, so Israel's next deliverer is running a band outside the land before anyone sends for him.

Judges 11:4-6

Chapter 10 closed with the princes of Gilead asking what man would begin the fight against the children of Ammon, and the man turns out to be the one they had driven out. The elders travel to Tob to fetch him, so Israel's leaders stand outside the land asking a favour of an exile. What they name first is captain, which is command over one campaign and ends when the campaign does.

Judges 11:7-8

Verse 2 lays the expulsion on his brothers and verse 7 lays it on the elders of Gilead, who answer without denying it. The offer rises from captain in verse 6 to head over all the inhabitants of Gilead in verse 8, and that exact title was already posted at 10:18 by the princes of Gilead to whatever man would begin the fight. The elders are holding to terms the previous chapter had set before they knew who would claim them.

Judges 11:9-11

He will not move on a promise and makes them swear it, and the elders answer with the LORD be witness between us. The place is Mizpeh in Gilead, and Genesis 31:49 gives that same country the name Mizpah for the same reason, the LORD watch between me and thee when we are absent one from another. Verse 11 adds that he uttered all his words before the LORD in Mizpeh, so a bargain struck with men is repeated as a matter between him and God, which is the shape the vow at verse 30 will take.

Judges 11:12-13

He sends before he strikes, which is the order Deuteronomy 20:10 lays down for a city offered peace. The king's claim is that Israel took away his land from Arnon even unto Jabbok when they came up out of Egypt, and that stretch is the kingdom of Sihon the Amorite in Numbers 21:24 rather than Ammonite ground. The same verse of Numbers says the border of the children of Ammon was strong, and Deuteronomy 2:19 had forbidden Israel to distress Ammon at all, so the two nations had never fought over it.

Judges 11:14-15

What follows is the longest speech in the book of Judges, and it is built as a legal answer rather than as a threat. The thesis comes first, that Israel took not away the land of Moab nor the land of the children of Ammon, so the whole case turns on whose land it was at the moment Israel took it. Verses 16 to 22 are the evidence for that one sentence, and the evidence is history drawn out of Numbers 20 and 21.

Judges 11:16-18

The route is Numbers 20:14-21 and Numbers 21:4-13: Kadesh, the refusal at Edom, the long compass around Edom and Moab, and camp beyond Arnon without crossing into Moab. Jephthah reports an embassy to the king of Moab which Numbers records only for Edom, and both accounts stand as they are written rather than one correcting the other. Arnon as the border of Moab is the fact the argument needs, because it means the ground north of the river was not Moabite when Israel arrived at it.

Judges 11:19-22

These four verses follow Numbers 21:21-25 closely, down to the request to pass through, Sihon's refusal, the battle at Jahaz, and the possession running from Arnon to Jabbok. The argument is that the land came out of Amorite hands in a war Sihon began, so Ammon is asking back ground it never held. Deuteronomy 2:24-36 tells the same campaign a third time, and the three accounts agree on the place, the aggressor and the outcome.

Judges 11:23-24

The god named in verse 24 is Chemosh, and Chemosh belongs to Moab in Numbers 21:29 and 1 Kings 11:7, while Ammon's god is Milcom in 1 Kings 11:5. Readers take the difficulty three ways: that Jephthah argues from the king's own premise without granting it, that Moab and Ammon shared cults along that border, or that the disputed strip had been Moabite before Sihon took it from Moab. Whether the sentence concedes anything real to Chemosh is argued as well, and commentators differ over how much of Israel's theology a Gileadite captain carried. The text reports his words and passes no judgment on them.

Judges 11:25-26

Balak hired Balaam and never once brought an army against Israel, which is Numbers 22 to 24, so Moab's own king made no claim by arms on ground Ammon now wants. The three hundred years of verse 26 is the largest chronological figure in Judges and it is read in more than one way: as a round number for a long occupation, as the sum of the servitudes and deliverances recorded to this point in the book, or as a figure to be fitted against the four hundred and eighty years of 1 Kings 6:1. The point Jephthah draws from it does not depend on the number being exact, since a claim left unpressed for centuries is what he is describing.

Judges 11:27-28

The speech ends by handing the case over, the LORD the Judge be judge this day, and the title he gives God is the book's own word for its heroes. Genesis 18:25 puts the same question to the same office, shall not the Judge of all the earth do right. Verse 28 records no reply of any kind, so the longest argument in Judges is met with silence and the war goes forward.

Judges 11:29-31

Spirit of the Lord came upon: The Spirit of the LORD comes on Jephthah, the third of seven times in this book after Othniel at 3:10 and Gideon at 6:34, and the remaining four all fall on Samson at 13:25, 14:6, 14:19 and 15:14. The vow is made after the Spirit has come, and the text records no command for it, no priest consulted and no answer given. Verse 31 turns on two words: the Hebrew behind whatsoever can be rendered whosoever, and the connective before the last clause is read as and by some and as or by others, which would give shall surely be the LORD's, or I will offer it up for a burnt offering. Both renderings are old and the grammar carries either.

Judges 11:32-33

The war gets two verses and the vow gets eight, which is the chapter's own weighting of what happened. Aroer stands on the Arnon and Minnith lies inland, so the twenty cities fall across the very strip the speech had just argued about. Ammon is subdued and the narrative turns straight back to Mizpeh, where the words of verse 30 were spoken.

Judges 11:34

Timbrels and dances is how Miriam meets the Red Sea deliverance in Exodus 15:20 and how the women of the cities meet Saul and David in 1 Samuel 18:6, so she is doing the ordinary thing a victory called for. The house she comes out of is the house of the vow, and the doors are the doors of verse 31. The last clause is set where it does the most work: she was his only child, and beside her he had neither son nor daughter, so the line of the man thrust out of his father's house ends with her.

Judges 11:35-36

He rends his clothes and says he cannot go back, and the law he stands on is Numbers 30:2 with Deuteronomy 23:21-23, which bind a man to what has gone out of his lips. What the chapter never mentions is Leviticus 27:1-8, where a person vowed to the LORD is redeemed by a valuation paid to the priest, thirty shekels for a woman of her years. Her own answer asks for no release either, and the reason she gives is the victory: the LORD hath taken vengeance for thee of thine enemies.

Judges 11:37-38

She asks two months, and what she goes up to bewail is her virginity rather than her life, which is the hinge of the whole dispute over what happened to her. Readers who take the vow as discharged in death answer that a woman dying childless in Israel lost her name as well as her life, so the mourning fits either outcome. The mountains and the fellows are given without a place name, and the text supplies no reason for the two months.

Judges 11:39-40

Two readings of this verse are ancient and both are held by serious men. Josephus in Antiquities of the Jews 5.7.10 and Keil and Delitzsch in their commentary on Judges read an actual burnt offering, while John Gill and Adam Clarke argue she was devoted to perpetual virginity, taking the clause that she knew no man as the outcome the verse stops to record and reading the yearly gathering of verse 40 as rehearsing her rather than mourning a death. What the text does not carry is a priest, an altar, an approval, or any word from God about the vow, and Leviticus 18:21 with Deuteronomy 12:31 forbid human sacrifice outright. Hebrews 11:32 names Jephthah among the faithful and says nothing of the vow, so the question is left standing where Scripture leaves it.