CHAPTER 11

(1161 B.C.)

JEPHTHAH

¹Now Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty man of valour, and he was the son of an harlot: and Gilead begat Jephthah. (Perhaps because he was the son of a harlot, he was despised, rejected, and hated; however, God used him greatly, even as we shall see. If a persons heart is toward God, irrespective of the past, God can use such a person, and often does so in order to rebuke His People, and to confound mans wisdom and power.)

²And Gileads wife bore him sons; and his wifes sons grew up, and they thrust out Jephthah, and said unto him, You shall not inherit in our fathers house; for you are the son of a strange woman (in a word, Jephthah was disinherited).

³Then Jephthah fled from his brethren, and dwelt in the land of Tob: and there were gathered vain men to Jephthah, and went out with him (these were broken or bankrupt men, who gravitated toward Jephthah, as, at a later time, similar individuals joined David in the Cave of Adullam).

⁴And it came to pass in process of time, that the children of Ammon made war against Israel.

⁵And it was so, that when the children of Ammon made war against Israel, the elders of Gilead went to fetch Jephthah out of the land of Tob (evidently, Jephthah had made a name for himself in some way, as it regards military expertise):

⁶And they said unto Jephthah, Come, and be our captain, that we may fight with the children of Ammon.

⁷And Jephthah said unto the elders of Gilead, Did not you hate me, and expel me out of my fathers house? And why are you come unto me now when you are in distress? (This proclaims the fact that his expulsion was not the private act of his own brothers turning him out of the house they lived in, but rather a tribal act in which the elders of Gilead had taken a part.)

⁸And the elders of Gilead said unto Jephthah, Therefore we turn again to you now, that you may go with us, and fight against the children of Ammon, and be our head over all the inhabitants of Gilead.

⁹And Jephthah said unto the elders of Gilead, If you bring me home again to fight against the children of Ammon, and the LORD deliver them before me, shall I be your head?

¹⁰And the elders of Gilead said unto Jephthah. The LORD be witness between us, if we do not so according to your words.

¹¹Then Jephthah went with the elders of Gilead, and the people made him head and captain over them: and Jephthah uttered all his words before the LORD in Mizpeh. (As is obvious here, Jephthah was a man of Faith, and, thereby, desired the Will of God in these matters.)

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

¹³And the king of the children of Ammon answered unto the messengers of Jephthah, Because Israel took away my land, when they came up out of Egypt, from Arnon even unto Jabbok, and unto Jordan: now therefore restore those lands again peaceably (this king demanded the surrender of a certain area of land as the only condition of peace).

¹⁴And Jephthah sent messengers again unto the king of the children of Ammon:

¹⁵And said unto him, Thus says Jephthah, Israel took not away the land of Moab, nor the land of the children of Ammon:

¹⁶But when Israel came up from Egypt, and walked through the wilderness unto the Red Sea, and came to Kadesh;

¹⁷Then Israel sent messengers unto the king of Edom, saying, Let me, I pray you, pass through your land: but the king of Edom would not hearken thereto. And in like manner they sent unto the king of Moab: but he would not consent: and Israel abode in Kadesh. (All of this of which is related took place over 300 years before.)

¹⁸Then they went along through the wilderness, and compassed the land of Edom, and the land of Moab, and came by the east side of the land of Moab, and pitched on the other side of Arnon, but came not within the border of Moab: for Arnon was the border of Moab.

¹⁹And Israel sent messengers unto Sihon king of the Amorites, the king of Heshbon; and Israel said unto him, Let us pass, we pray you, through your land into my place.

²⁰But Sihon trusted not Israel to pass through his coast (borders): but Sihon gathered all his people together, and pitched in Jahaz, and fought against Israel.

²¹And the LORD God of Israel delivered Sihon and all his people into the hand of Israel, and they smote them: so Israel possessed all the land of the Amorites, the inhabitants of that country.

²²And they possessed all the coasts of the Amorites, from Arnon even unto Jabbok, and from the wilderness even unto Jordan.

²³So now the LORD God of Israel has dispossessed the Amorites from before His people Israel, and should you possess it? (In other words, Israel had come by these lands legitimately.)

²⁴Will not you possess that which Chemosh your god gives you to possess? So whomsoever the LORD our God shall drive out from before us, them will we possess. (In effect, Jephthah is pitting the Lord God against the idols of the Ammonites.)

²⁵And now 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 (Jephthah now advances another argument to prove the justice of his cause and the unreasonableness of the Ammonite claim. If the territory in question was Moabite property, how came it that Balak laid no claim to it? So, if Balak, those long years before, had laid no claim to this area, neither should the Ammonites),

²⁶While Israel dwelt in Heshbon and her towns, and in Aroer and her towns, and in all the cities that be along by the coasts of Arnon, three hundred years? why therefore did you not recover them within that time? (Good question!)

²⁷Wherefore I have not sinned against you, but you do me wrong to war against me: the LORD the Judge be judge this day between the Children of Israel and the children of Ammon.

²⁸Howbeit the king of the children of Ammon hearkened not unto the words of Jephthah which he sent him.

JEPHTHAHS RASH VOW

²⁹Then the Spirit of the LORD came upon Jephthah, and he passed over Gilead, and Manasseh, and passed over Mizpeh of Gilead, and from Mizpeh of Gilead he passed over unto the children of Ammon. (The Spirit of the Lord is what is guiding Jephthah, and he makes his move according to the Lords command.)

³⁰And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the LORD, and said, If you shall without fail deliver the children of Ammon into my hands,

³¹Then it shall be, that whatsoever comes forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the LORDs, and I will offer it up for a Burnt Offering (the word and in the Hebrew is frequently translated or in the Scriptures; so, it would then read, shall surely be the LORDs, or I will offer it up for a Burnt Offering).

VICTORY

³²So Jephthah passed over unto the children of Ammon to fight against them; and the LORD delivered them into his hands.

³³And he smote them from Aroer, even till you come to Minnith, even twenty cities, and unto the plain of the vineyards, with a very great slaughter. Thus the children of Ammon were subdued before the Children of Israel.

JEPHTHAHS VOW FULFILLED

³⁴And 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.

³⁵And it came to pass, when he saw her, that he rent his clothes, and said, Alas, my daughter! You have brought me very low, and you are one of them that trouble me: for I have opened my mouth unto the LORD, and I cannot go back.

³⁶And she said unto him, My father, if you have opened your mouth unto the LORD, do to me according to that which has proceeded out of your mouth; forasmuch as the LORD has taken vengeance for you of your enemies, even of the children of Ammon.

³⁷And she said unto her father, Let this thing be done for me: let me alone two months, that I may go up and down upon the mountains, and bewail my virginity, I and my fellows.

³⁸And he said, Go. And he sent her away for two months: and she went with her companions, and bewailed her virginity upon the mountains.

³⁹And it came to pass at the end of two months, that she returned unto her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had vowed: and she knew no man. And it was a custom in Israel,

⁴⁰That the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in a year. (Jephthah did not put his daughter to death and offer up her body as a Burnt Sacrifice to Jehovah, for such sacrifices were sternly forbidden in the Law [Lev. 18:21; 20:2-5]. What he did was the following:

He dedicated his daughter to Jehovah by a perpetual virginity. This is conclusive from the statement in Verse 39 that after her father had performed his vow, she knew no man, that is, she never was married.

Considering that no children would be born into this family, this meant that the line of Jephthah would end with his death and her death; however, Jephthah is mentioned in Hebrews 11:32 as one of the great giants of Faith. And so he was!)