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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Judges 11:29 - 11:29
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Jephthah's Victory over the Ammonites. - As the negotiations with the king of the Ammonites were fruitless, Jephthah had no other course left than to appeal to the sword.
Jdg 11:29
In the power of the Spirit of Jehovah which came upon him (see Jdg 3:10), he passed through Gilead (the land of the tribes of Reuben and Gad between the Arnon and the Jabbok) and Manasseh (northern Gilead and Bashan, which the half tribe of Manasseh had received for a possession), to gather together an army to battle, and then went with the assembled army to Mizpeh-Gilead, i.e., Ramoth-mizpeh, where the Israelites had already encamped before his call (Jdg 10:17), that he might thence attach the Ammonites. עָבַר (to pass over) with an accusative signifies to come over a person in a hostile sense.
Jdg 11:30-31
Before commencing the war, however, he vowed a vow to the Lord: “If Thou givest the Ammonites into my hand, he who cometh to meet me out of the doors of my house, when I return safely (in peace, shalom) from the Ammonites, shall belong to the Lord, and I will offer him for a burnt-offering.” By the words אֲשֶׁר הַיֹּוצֵא, “he that goeth out,” even if Jephthah did not think “only of a man, or even more definitely still of some one of his household,” he certainly could not think in any case of a head of cattle, or one of his flock. “Going out of the doors of his house to meet him” is an expression that does not apply to a herd or flock driven out of the stall just at the moment of his return, or to any animal that might possibly run out to meet him. For the phrase לִקְרָאת יָצָא is only applied to men in the other passages in which it occurs.
(Note: Augustine observes in his Quaest. xlix. in l. Jud.: “He did not vow in these words that he would offer some sheep, which he might present as a holocaust, according to the law. For it is not, and was not, a customary thing for sheep to come out to meet a victorious general returning from the war. Nor did he say, I will offer as a holocaust whatever shall come out of the doors of my house to meet me; but he says, 'Whoever comes out, I will offer him;' so that there can be no doubt whatever that he had then a human being in his mind.”)
Moreover, Jephthah no doubt intended to impose a very difficult vow upon himself. And that would not have been the case if he had merely been thinking of a sacrificial animal. Even without any vow, he would have offered, not one, but many sacrifices after obtaining a victory.
(Note: “What kind of vow would it be if some great prince or general should say, 'O God, if Thou wilt give me this victory, the first calf that meets me shall be Thine!' Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus!” - Pfeiffer, dubia vex. p. 356.)
If therefore he had an animal sacrifice in his mind, he would certainly have vowed the best of his flocks. From all this there can be no doubt that Jephthah must have been thinking of some human being as at all events included in his vow; so that when he declared that he would dedicate that which came out of his house to meet him, the meaning of the vow cannot have been any other than that he would leave the choice of the sacrifice to God himself. “In his eagerness to smite the foe, and to thank God for it, Jephthah could not think of any particular object to name, which he could regard as great enough to dedicate to God; he therefore left it to accident, i.e., to the guidance of God, to determine the sacrifice. He shrank from measuring what was dearest to God, and left this to God himself” (P. Cassel in Herzog's Real-encycl.). Whomsoever God should bring to meet him, he would dedicate to Jehovah, and indeed, as is added afterwards by way of defining it more precisely, he would offer him to the Lord as a burnt-offering. The וְ before הַעֲלִיתִיהוּ is to be taken as explanatory, and not as disjunctive in the sense of “or,” which ו never has. But whether Jephthah really thought of his daughter at the time, cannot be determined either in the affirmative or negative. If he did, he no doubt hoped that the Lord would not demand this hardest of all sacrifices.
Jdg 11:32-33
After seeking to ensure the help of the Lord by this vow, he went against the Ammonites to fight against them; and the Lord delivered them into his hand, so that Jephthah smote them in a very great slaughter “from Aroër (or Nahr Ammân; see Jdg 11:26) to the neighbourhood of ('till thou come to;' see at Gen 10:19) Minnith, (conquering and taking) twenty cities, and to Abel Keramim (of the vineyards).” Minnith, according to the Onom. (s. v. Mennith), was a place called Manith in the time of Eusebius, four Roman miles from Heshbon on the road to Philadelphia, with which the account given by Buckingham of the ruins of a large city a little to the east of Heshbon may be compared (see v. Raum. Pal. p. 265). The situation of Abel Keramim (plain of the vineyards: Luther and Eng. Ver.) cannot be determined with the same certainty. Eusebius and Jerome mention two places of this name (Onom. s. v. Abel vinearum), a villa Abela vinetis consita (κώμη ἀμπελοφόρος Ἄβελ) seven Roman miles from Philadelphia, and a civitas nomine Abela vini fertilis twelve Roman miles to the east of Gadara, and therefore in the neighbourhood of the Mandhur. Which of the two is referred to here remains uncertain, as we have no precise details concerning the battle. If the northern Abela should be meant, Jephthah would have pursued the foe first of all towards the south to the neighbourhood of Heshbon, and then to the north to the border of Bashan. Through his victory the Ammonites were completely subdued before the Israelites.