Judges 11

¹ Jephthah the Gileadite was a valiant warrior. He was the son of a harlot. Gilead was Jephthah’s father,

² but Gilead’s wife also bore him sons, and the sons of this wife, when they grew up, drove Jephthah out, saying, ‘You are to have no share in our father’s inheritance, because you are the son of an alien woman’.

³ Jephthah fled from his brothers and made his home in the land of Tob.Worthless followers gathered round him and used to go raiding with him.

⁴ Some time after this, the Ammonites took up arms against Israel.

⁵ And when the Ammonites had attacked Israel, the elders of Gilead went to fetch Jephthah from the land of Tob.

⁶ ‘Come’ they said ‘and be our commander, and we can fight the Ammonites.’

⁷ But Jephthah answered the elders of Gilead, ‘Was it not you who hated me and drove me out of my father’s house? Why come to me when you are in trouble?’

⁸ The elders of Gilead answered Jephthah, ‘That is exactly why we have come back to you. Come with us; fight the Ammonites and be our leader, leader of all the inhabitants of Gilead.’

⁹ Jephthah answered the elders of Gilead, ‘If you take me home to fight the Ammonites and Yahweh puts them at my mercy, I am to be your leader?’

¹⁰ The elders of Gilead answered Jephthah, ‘Yahweh be witness between us. May we be accursed if we do not do as you have said!’

¹¹ So Jephthah set off with the elders of Gilead. The people set him at their head as leader and commander; and Jephthah repeated all his conditions at Mizpah in Yahweh’s presence.

¹² Jephthah sent messengers to the king of the Ammonites to say to him, ‘What is the trouble between us, for you to come and make war on my country?’

¹³ The king of the Ammonites answered Jephthah’s messengers, ‘The reason is that when Israel came up from Egypt, they seized my land from the Arnon to the Jabbok and the Jordan. Give it back peaceably now.’

¹⁴ Jephthah sent messengers to the king of the Ammonites

¹⁵ with this answer, Jephthah says this: “Israel seized neither the land of Moab nor the land of the Ammonites.

¹⁶ When Israel came out of Egypt, they passed through the wilderness to the Sea of Reeds and reached Kadesh.

¹⁷ Then Israel sent messengers to the king of Edom to say to him: Please let us pass through your country, but the king of Edom would not listen. They sent similarly to the king of Moab, but he refused, and Israel remained at Kadesh;

¹⁸ later they made their way through the wilderness, going round the countries of Edom and Moab until they were to the east of Moab territory. The people encamped beyond the Arnon but did not cross the border of Moab, for the Arnon itself is the boundary there.

¹⁹ Then Israel sent messengers to Sihon the king of the Amorites, who ruled at Heshbon. Israel’s message was: Please let us pass through your country to our destination.

²⁰ But Sihon would not let Israel pass through his territory; he mustered his whole army; they encamped at Jahaz, and he then joined battle with Israel.

²¹ Yahweh the God of Israel delivered Sihon and his whole army into the power of Israel; Israel defeated them and took possession of the whole country of the Amorites who lived in that region.

²² Thus they came to occupy the whole country of the Amorites, from the Arnon to the Jabbok and from the wilderness to the Jordan.

²³ And now that Yahweh the God of Israel has driven the Amorites out before his people Israel, will one such as you dispossess us?

²⁴ Do you not possess all that Chemosh your god took from its owners?[*a] In the same fashion, whatever Yahweh our God took from its owners, that we possess too.

²⁵ Are you a better man than Balak son of Zippor, the king of Moab? Did he challenge Israel? Did he make war against them?

²⁶ When Israel settled in Heshbon and its outlying villages, or in Jazer and its villages, or in any of the towns on the banks of the Jordan (three hundred years), why did you not recover those places then?

²⁷ I for my part have committed no sin against you, rather, you for your part are wronging me by making war on me. Let Yahweh the Judge givejudgement today between the sons of Israel and the king of the Ammonites.”‘

²⁸ But the king of the Ammonites took no notice of the message Jephthah had sent him.

²⁹ The spirit of Yahweh came on Jephthah, who crossed Gilead and Manasseh, passed through to Mizpah in Gilead, and from Mizpah in Gilead made his way to the rear of the Ammonites.

³⁰ And Jephthah made a vow to Yahweh, ‘If you deliver the Ammonites into my hands,

³¹ then the first person to meet me from the door of my house when I return in triumph from fighting the Ammonites shall belong to Yahweh, and I will offer him up as a holocaust’.[*b]

³² Jephthah marched against the Ammonites to attack them, and Yahweh delivered them into his power.

³³ He harassed them from Aroer almost to Minnith (twenty towns) and to Abel-keramim. It was a very severe defeat, and the Ammonites were humbled before the Israelites.

³⁴ As Jephthah returned to his house at Mizpah, his daughter came out from it to meet him; she was dancing to the sound of timbrels. This was his only child; apart from her he had neither son nor daughter.

³⁵ When he saw her, he tore his clothes and exclaimed, ‘Oh my daughter, what sorrow you are bringing me! Must it be you, the cause of my ill-fortune! I have given a promise to Yahweh,and I cannot unsay what I have said.’

³⁶ She answered him, ‘My father, you have given a promise to Yahweh; treat me as the vow you took binds you to, since Yahweh has given you vengeance on your enemies the Ammonites.’

³⁷ Then she said to her father, ‘Grant me one request. Let me be free for two months. I shall go and wander in the mountains, and with my companions bewail my virginity.’

³⁸ He answered, ‘Go’, and let her depart for two months. So she went away with her companions and bewailed her virginity in the mountains.

³⁹ When the two months were over, she returned to her father, and he treated her as the vow that he had uttered bound him. She had never known a man. From this comes this custom in Israel

⁴⁰ for the daughters of Israel to leave home every year and to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite for four days every year.