1And Jephthah the Gileadite was a valiant warrior, and he was the son of a whore-woman, and Gilead had begotten Jephthah. 2And Gilead’s wife bore him sons, and the wife’s sons grew up and they drove Jephthah out and said to him, “You shall not inherit in our father’s house, for you are the son of another woman.” 3And Jephthah fled from his brothers and dwelled in the land of Tob, and no-account men drew round Jephthah and sallied forth with him. 4And it happened after a time that the Ammonites did battle with Israel. 5And it happened when the Ammonites did battle with Israel, that the elders of Gilead went to take Jephthah from the land of Tob. 6And they said to Jephthah, “Come, be our captain, that we may do battle with the Ammonites.” 7And Jephthah said to the elders of Gilead, “Did you not hate me and drive me out from my father’s house, and why do you come to me now when you are in distress?” 8And the elders of Gilead said to Jephthah, “Therefore now we have come back to you, and you shall go with us and do battle with the Ammonites, and you shall become chief for us, for all the inhabitants of Gilead.” 9And Jephthah said to the elders of Gilead, “If you bring me back to do battle with the Ammonites and the LORD gives them to me, it is I who will be your chief.” 10And the elders of Gilead said to Jephthah, “May the LORD be witness between us that we will surely do according to your word.” 11And Jephthah went with the elders of Gilead, and the people set him over them as chief and captain, and Jephthah spoke all his words before the LORD at Mizpah.
12And Jephthah sent messengers to the king of the Ammonites, saying, “What is between you and me that you have come to do battle in my land?” 13And the king of the Ammonites said to Jephthah’s messengers, “For Israel took my land when it came up from Egypt, from the Arnon to the Jabbok and to the Jordan. And now, give them back in peace.” 14And Jephthah again sent messengers to the king of the Ammonites, 15and he said to him, “Thus says Jephthah: Israel did not take the land of Moab and the land of the Ammonites, 16but when it came up from Egypt, Israel went in the wilderness as far as the Sea of Reeds and came to Kadesh. 17And Israel sent messengers to the king of Edom, saying, ‘Let me pass, pray, through your land,’ and the king of Edom did not listen. And to the king of Moab, too, they sent and he would not agree. And Israel stayed in Kadesh. 18And they went through the wilderness and swung round the land of Edom and the land of Moab and came from the east of the land of Moab and camped across the Arnon and did not come into the territory of Moab because the Arnon is the border of Moab. 19And Israel sent messengers to Sihon king of the Amorites, king of Heshbon, and said to him, ‘Let us pass, pray, through your land to our place.’ 20And Sihon did not trust Israel to pass through his territory, and Sihon gathered all his troops, and they camped at Jahaz and did battle with Israel. 21And the LORD God of Israel gave Sihon and all his troops into the hand of Israel, and they struck them down, and Israel took hold of all the land of the Amorites, the inhabitants of that land. 22And they took hold of all the territory of the Amorites from the Arnon to the Jabbok and from the wilderness to the Jordan. 23And so, the LORD God of Israel dispossessed the Amorites before His people Israel, and would you possess it? 24Do you not take possession of what Chemosh your god gives you to possess? And all that the LORD our God has given us to possess, of that we shall take possession. 25And now, are you really better than Balak son of Zippor king of Moab? Did he strive with Israel, did he do battle with them? 26When Israel dwelled in Heshbon and in its hamlets and in Aroer and in its hamlets and in all the towns that are along the Arnon three hundred years, why did you not recover them in all that time? 27I on my part have committed no offense against you, yet you are doing evil to battle with me. Let the LORD, Who is judge, judge today between the Israelites and the Moabites.” 28But the king of the Ammonites did not listen to Jephthah’s words that he had sent him.
29And the spirit of the LORD was upon Jephthah, and he passed through Gilead and Manasseh and passed through Mizpeh Gilead, and from Mizpeh Gilead he passed on to the Ammonites. 30And Jephthah made a vow to the LORD and said, “If You indeed give the Ammonites into my hand, 31it shall be that whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return safe and sound from the Ammonites shall be the LORD’s, and I shall offer it up as a burnt offering.” 32And Jephthah crossed over to the Ammonites to do battle with them, and the LORD gave them into his hand. 33And he struck them from Aroer to where you come to Minnith, twenty towns, and to Abel Ceramim, a very great blow, and the Ammonites were laid low before Israel. 34And Jephthah came to his house at Mizpah, and, look, his daughter was coming out to meet him with timbrels and with dances, and she was an only child—besides her, he had neither son nor daughter. 35And it happened when he saw her, that he rent his garments, and he said, “Alas, my daughter, you have indeed laid me low and you have joined ranks with my troublers, for I myself have opened my mouth to the LORD, and I cannot turn back.” 36And she said to him, “My father, you have opened your mouth to the LORD. Do to me as it came out from your mouth, after the LORD has wreaked vengeance for you from your enemies, from the Ammonites.” 37And she said to her father, “Let this thing be done for me: let me be for two months, that I may go and weep on the mountains and keen for my maidenhood, I and my companions.” 38And he said, “Go.” And he sent her off for two months, her and her companions, and she keened for her maidenhood on the mountains. 39And it happened at the end of the two months, that she came back to her father, and he did to her as he had vowed, and she had known no man. And it became a fixed practice in Israel 40that each year the daughters of Israel would go to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in the year.
CHAPTER 11 NOTES
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2. Gilead’s wife bore him sons. The probable, though not inevitable, inference is that the legitimate sons were born after Jephthah, he belonging to his father’s wild-oats phase.
You shall not inherit in our father’s house. This declaration, accompanied by the banishment, appears to be a performative speech-act with legal force.
for you are the son of another woman. They don’t dare call his mother a whore to his face, and so they use a euphemism. Their behavior toward him, however, is brutal (in this regard, see the next comment).
3. And Jephthah fled from his brothers. The fact that he has to flee suggests that their driving him out was implemented with a threat of doing him bodily harm.
the land of Tob. This is a remote region in the northeastern sector of Gilead.
no-account men. The same term, reiqim (literally, “empty”) is also used for the mercenaries hired by Abimelech. It probably refers to men without property, on the margins of society, who have nothing to lose and readily join a band of guerillas or bandits. The young David also puts together a private militia of this sort when he flees from Saul.
5. the elders of Gilead went to take Jephthah from the land of Tob. Their going to seek him out in the badlands where he has located with his fighters obviously reflects the dire straits in which they find themselves.
6. Come, be our captain. Their initial speech to him is brusque, devoid of deference or diplomatic gesture. The position they offer him is military commander, qatsin.
7. Did you not hate me and drive me out from my father’s house. We now learn something new about the banishment: the brothers’ harsh act either had the tacit endorsement of the elders or was actively abetted by them.
8. Therefore now we have come back to you. The “therefore” amounts to a concession on their part: precisely because we were complicit in your banishment, we now come to you to make amends. “Come back” or “bring back” is a thematic key word in this story.
chief. Now they up the political ante: he will not be merely a captain but chief, or head, roʿsh, of the whole community.
9. If you bring me back. The man who was driven out now contemplates being brought back, as the elders have “come back” to him. Instead of accepting the immediate offer to be chief, he stipulates that he will assume that position only if he is victorious in battle, but he would have to become captain in order to undertake the battle.
it is I. The Hebrew puts the pronoun “I,” usually not needed, before the conjugated verb in a structure of emphasis.
10. May the LORD be witness. Literally, “May the LORD listen.”
11. the people set him over them as chief and captain. In the event, both positions are conferred on him before the battle.
Jephthah spoke all his words before the LORD. This is a prayer before the battle or perhaps an inquiry of an oracle.
12. And Jephthah sent messengers to the king of the Ammonites. The scholarly consensus is that this entire passage of attempted diplomatic negotiation has been spliced in from another source. According to the account in Numbers 20 and 33, it is Moab, not Ammon, that refuses right of transit to Israel, and, in fact, Moab is mentioned first here (verse 15) and more often, together with Edom and the Amorites. “The land of the Ammonites” may well be an editorial addition intended to link this passage with the surrounding narrative. Chemosh, the deity mentioned in verse 24, is the national god of the Moabites, whereas the Ammonite god would be Milcom.
24. Do you not take possession of what Chemosh your god gives you to possess? The theological assumption of this statement is perfectly characteristic of this early period of Israelite history. Israel has its own God, YHWH (“the LORD”), believed to be more powerful than other gods, but each nation has its guiding deity, assumed to look after the national destiny.
25. Did he strive with Israel, did he do battle with them? In fact, he fought against Israel, as is reported in Numbers 22, but to no avail, for YHWH caused him to be defeated.
29. And the spirit of the LORD was upon Jephthah. Only now, when Jephthah actually leads his troops into battle, do we have the formula of the investment by the divine spirit, the leader’s charisma, that is used for most of the other judges.
31. whatever comes out of the door of the house to meet me. The Hebrew is ambiguous: it could mean “whatever” or “whoever.” Some scholars have argued for the latter because “to meet” seems to imply a person, but the Hebrew, which is in fact a preposition and not a verb, has the sense of “toward,” and it seems unlikely that Jephthah would have deliberately envisaged human sacrifice from the start. In any case, it is a rash vow: the Midrash Tanhuma shrewdly notes that the first creature out of the house could have been a dog or a pig, animals unfit for sacrifice. The vow focuses on the act of return to the house, but the killing of Jephthah’s only child will mean the destruction of his house in the extended sense of the term.
32. the LORD gave them into his hand. This is all we are provided by way of a description of the battle.
34. and, look. As repeatedly used elsewhere, the presentative term marks the switch to the visual point of view of the character.
with timbrels and with dances. It was the role of young women to celebrate the victory in this fashion. The dance of joy will immediately turn into lamentation.
35. my daughter. This is an affectionate form of address, like “child.”
for I myself have opened my mouth to the LORD. The Hebrew incorporates a crucial pun. Jephthah’s name, yiftaḥ, means “he opens.” The verb used here, patsah, is slightly different from the verb pataḥ on which the name is based, but it is a close phonetic and semantic cousin. The belief shared by father and daughter is that vows to God are irrevocable and nonnegotiable: what comes out of the mouth cannot be brought back (“I cannot turn back,” a locution heavy with ironic resonances in light of Jephthah’s attempt to come back to the house from which he was driven).
36. Do to me as it came out from your mouth. Neither she nor her father can bring themselves to mention explicitly the horrific content of the vow. She speaks almost as though the vow were an autonomous agent that came out of her father’s mouth and cannot be called back.
37. And she said to her father. This is one of the most arresting instances of the convention of repeating the formula for the introduction of speech with no intervening answer in order to indicate a difficulty in responding on the part of the interlocutor in the dialogue. Jephthah, hearing his daughter’s declaration that she is willing to become a burnt offering in fulfillment of the vow, is dumbfounded and doesn’t know what to say. His daughter then goes on to add her special request to the affirmation of compliance she has just uttered.
weep. The Hebrew verb weyaradti in the form in which it appears would normally mean “and I shall go down,” but going down upon mountains doesn’t make much sense. The least strained solution is to assume it is a scrambling of ʾarid, which in Psalm 55:3 is a verb associated with weeping or complaint. Another possibility is to link the term here with the rare verbal stem r-w-d, which probably means something like “wander.”
38. And he said, “Go.” Jephthah’s extreme brevity of response suggests a man choked with emotion, barely able to speak.
her and her companions. Here and in the previous verse, it is unambiguous in the Hebrew that the companions are female—nubile young women like Jephthah’s daughter.
39. he did to her as he had vowed. The narrator, like father and daughter in the dialogue, avoids spelling out the terrible act of child sacrifice. This whole story has parallels elsewhere in the ancient Mediterranean world, the most obvious being Agamemnon’s sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia in order to obtain favorable winds to sail to the Trojan war. The parallel episode within the Bible is the Binding of Isaac, but here, in contrast to Genesis 22, the ending is tragic.
and she had known no man. This concluding note about her virginity underscores the point of keening for her maidenhood: she is cut off from the living without ever having had the opportunity to enjoy the fulfillment that life has in store for a woman.
40. each year the daughters of Israel would go to lament the daughter of Jephthah. The long-standing scholarly hypothesis that this is an etiological tale to explain an annual ritual still seems valid: one suspects a pagan practice in which young women go off to mourn the descent into the underworld each year of a vegetation goddess, a virgin like themselves, roughly analogous to the Greek Persephone and to the Mesopotamian male vegetation god, Tammuz.