Bible Commentaries
Judges 11

Verses 17-28

The Deliverer and His Challenge (10:17-11:28)

The Ammonites assembled to do battle in Gilead. The Israelites gathered at Mizpah, whose site has not been identified. Mysteriously, however, Israel had no battle leader. It was declared that such a one, if he could be found, should become head over all the inhabitants of Gilead. Verses 17 and 18, which record this, appear to be a general summary of the situation, since Jephthah is boldly introduced in 11:1, with no reference to the statement contained in the previous verses, and the theme of war with the Ammonites is raised once more in 11:4-5, this time with mention of Jephthah.

In 11:1-3, we are given information about Jephthah himself. He was the son of a harlot and thus genealogically fatherless. His mother was neither a lawful wife nor a concubine. Hence in the place of a father, the name of the land of his birth is substituted. Gilead was the father of Jephthah. As a bastard, Jephthah had no hereditary rights. His half-brothers drove him out, so that he became the leader of a lawless band in the land of Tob, now thought to be in the neighborhood of Ramoth-gilead.

In their plight, the elders of Gilead recalled Jephthah from his outlawry to invite him to be their leader against the Ammonites. He discomfited them by the brutally frank query as to why they should suddenly reverse their attitude toward him. Characteristics which led to outlawry in peacetime had become valuable in wartime. Trouble and crisis often make us see qualities in people that we do not see in times of peace. The elders repeated their conviction that only a victorious leader in battle was qualified to be chief of the land in time of peace, and implied that Jephthah’s skill in the former made him their inevitable choice. He accepted their double offer and they swore to keep their side of the compact. The Lord was witness or hearer of their oath. Jephthah’s acceptance of leadership, provided he was successful in battle, and the corresponding commitment of the elders of Gilead were ratified before the Lord at Mizpah. Here there seems to be indicated some mutual covenantal rite between the erstwhile outlaw and the elders at the local shrine. Jephthah, we read, "spoke all his words before the Lord at Mizpah."

Jephthah now inquired of the Ammonites their motives in making war, only to be told that Israel took from them the land east of the Jordan, from the border of Moab northward, and that it should be restored to them as its rightful owners.

In reply, the Israelite leader argued for Israel’s right to the land east of the Jordan. He contended that when Israel entered Canaan she took no land from Moab or Ammon but respected their rights; that when Edom and Moab refused permission for Israel to pass through their territory, the Hebrew people detoured around those regions (Numbers 20:14-21; Numbers 21:11-13), even taking care not to trespass in Moab by camping beyond its boundary, the River Arnon; that when they asked permission to pass through the land of the Amorites, Sihon refused such peaceful passage, so that they forcibly took possession of his land (see Numbers 21:21 to Numbers 22:1). The point of the last reference is that this was part of the area now under dispute, southern Gilead north of the Moabite border. Thus Israel held Sihon’s land by right of conquest. Jephthah argued that Israel’s God had fought for it, and hence that God had dispossessed this land for Israel and given it into the possession of his people. After all, the god of the Ammonites had given their land into their possession, so why should they dispute what Israel’s God had given to it? We notice two things here. The first is the mistaken name of the Ammonite deity. "Chemosh" (vs. 24) was the god of Moab rather than of Ammon. This confusion may have been a mistake of later editors. The second feature is the emphasis on the reality of the other deities. In Jephthah’s speech Israel’s God is thought of as existing alongside the gods of the other nations. There is little doubt that monotheism, the faith in one universal deity, was implicit in the revelation to Moses and that Moses himself had the rudiments of such a faith; but contact with other nations had prevented Israel from sharing the vision of the great wilderness leader. Other gods were tied to national territory, and, at this stage, Israel at times conceived of God in the same way, although the deeper vision of God’s might and activity kept breaking through.

The implication of Jephthah’s argument so far was that Amnion’s claim to Gilead was unjustified. He now turned to previous attempts to hinder Israel’s victorious progress. Balak of Moab had not succeeded and Ammon had no better claim to the conquered land than he. Furthermore, why had Ammon waited three hundred years before asserting its rights to the territory? The two places mentioned, Heshbon and Aroer, are situated in Gilead east of Jordan and north of the Moabite border at Arnon. We note that the period of 300 years actually fits into the length of the period of the judges so far covered in the book. Until the beginning of the Ammonite oppression, the figures add up to 301 years. Ammon was in the wrong, argued Jephthah. If the Ammonites wanted to make war over the issue, then God would decide between them and Israel.

Verses 29-33

Jephthah’s Vow and Victory (11:29-33)

The charismatic element now enters into the situation. The Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah. His message rejected, he stirred up the men of Manasseh and Gilead for war. Apparently they gathered at the shrine at Mizpah, where Jephthah vowed that if God vouchsafed victory, Jephthah would offer as a burnt offering whoever first crossed the threshold of his home to greet him on his return. Evidently a human sacrifice was here implied. A great blessing from God seemed to demand a supreme sacrifice in return, and Israelite custom was still at the level when human or child sacrifice was not unknown. The patriarchal story of Abraham’s offering of Isaac and the provision of the ram as a substitute reflects the period when men were learning that God did not require a human life at their hands (Genesis 22:9-14). Jephthah is to be judged here by the standards of his time and not by ours. At least he was giving to God what he had. He must have known that his daughter was a real possibility, since, according to custom, the women of the house came forth to greet a returning victor (see 1 Samuel 18:6). God demands our best — this at least was recognized, but with misunderstanding of its significance.

The victory over the Ammonites was complete. The Lord delivered them into Israel’s hand, an indication that this was regarded as a holy war in which God fought for and with his people. The same implication lies in the emphasis on the charismatic nature of Jephthah’s leadership.

Verses 34-40

Jephthah’s Return (11:34-40)

As with Miriam’s greeting and at Saul’s victorious return (Exodus 15:20; 1 Samuel 18:6), so in Jephthah’s case, he was greeted by the women of his household with timbrels and dances. His only child, a daughter, came first to greet him in this way, and the terrible nature of his vow dawned on him. His predicament was that he could not take back the vow, an indication that it came out of a deeply religious emotion. We need to remember the Hebrew realism involved here. A man’s words, if uttered in high seriousness, became extensions of his own personality and carried something of himself in them. Should he fail to fulfill them, then his own personal integrity would be at stake (see Deuteronomy 23:21-22). His daughter, with a noble simplicity, recognized Jephthah’s dilemma. God had given him triumph, and he must fulfill his vow. Let him grant her two months to bewail her virginity; that is, to lament that she was to die unmarried and childless. Again we note the Hebrew realism, for in those early days, to die childless meant to have no perpetuity beyond death. At best, personal survival after death was but a shadowy one in Sheol, the one abode of the dead which embraced every family grave. Real immortality lay in the extension of personality down through time in one’s offspring. Hence the grief of Rachel weeping for her children has a double bitterness (Jeremiah 31:15; Matthew 2:18), as does the case of Jephthah’s daughter.

The writer with fine restraint implies that the vow was carried out and the sacrifice made. This noble story, despite its primitive background and uncivilized overtones, has inspired poems by Byron and Tennyson. But, long before this, it had left its mark on Israel’s history. When, in after years, the pagan ceremony of weeping for Tammuz (Ezekiel 8:14), a god of spring and fertility, had inspired an annual retreat of the women of Israel, the true motivation of this ceremony appears to have been covered up by the identification of it with the annual remembrance of Jephthah’s daughter. With all of Jephthah’s limitations and lack of ethical vision, his deep sense of obligation to God colors this story, as does the piety of his daughter.