--- title: "Judges 11 - Study King James Bible with the church pulpit commentary" description: "Read Judges 11 with the church pulpit commentary commentary. 1 Now Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty man of valour, and he was the son of an harlot: and Gilead begat Jephthah. 2 And Gilead’s wife bare him sons; an" image: "/_app/immutable/assets/missing.C7wGMEZ6.jpg" url: "https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/the-church-pulpit-commentary/judges/11" --- [ Read](/kjv/judges/11)[ Commentary](/study/judges/11)[ Interlinear](/interlinear/judges/11) Audio 1 Now Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty man of valour, and he *was* the son of an harlot: and Gilead begat Jephthah.** 2 And Gilead’s wife bare him sons; and his wife’s sons grew up, and they thrust out Jephthah, and said unto him, Thou shalt not inherit in our father’s house; for thou *art* the son of a strange woman. 3 Then 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.* 4 ¶ And it came to pass in process of time, that the children of Ammon made war against Israel.* 5 And 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: 6 And they said unto Jephthah, Come, and be our captain, that we may fight with the children of Ammon. 7 And Jephthah said unto the elders of Gilead, Did not ye hate me, and expel me out of my father’s house? and why are ye come unto me now when ye are in distress? 8 And the elders of Gilead said unto Jephthah, Therefore we turn again to thee now, that thou mayest go with us, and fight against the children of Ammon, and be our head over all the inhabitants of Gilead. 9 And Jephthah said unto the elders of Gilead, If ye bring me home again to fight against the children of Ammon, and the LORD deliver them before me, shall I be your head? 10 And the elders of Gilead said unto Jephthah, The LORD be witness between us, if we do not so according to thy words.* 11 Then 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. 12 ¶ And Jephthah sent messengers unto the king of the children of Ammon, saying, What hast thou to do with me, that thou art come against me to fight in my land? 13 And 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. 14 And Jephthah sent messengers again unto the king of the children of Ammon: 15 And said unto him, Thus saith Jephthah, Israel took not away the land of Moab, nor the land of the children of Ammon: 16 But when Israel came up from Egypt, and walked through the wilderness unto the Red sea, and came to Kadesh; 17 Then Israel sent messengers unto the king of Edom, saying, Let me, I pray thee, pass through thy 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. 18 Then 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. 19 And Israel sent messengers unto Sihon king of the Amorites, the king of Heshbon; and Israel said unto him, Let us pass, we pray thee, through thy land into my place. 20 But Sihon trusted not Israel to pass through his coast: but Sihon gathered all his people together, and pitched in Jahaz, and fought against Israel. 21 And 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. 22 And they possessed all the coasts of the Amorites, from Arnon even unto Jabbok, and from the wilderness even unto Jordan. 23 So now the LORD God of Israel hath dispossessed the Amorites from before his people Israel, and shouldest thou possess it? 24 Wilt not thou possess that which Chemosh thy god giveth thee to possess? So whomsoever the LORD our God shall drive out from before us, them will we possess. 25 And now *art* thou any thing better than Balak the son of Zippor, king of Moab? did he ever strive against Israel, or did he ever fight against them, 26 While 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 ye not recover *them* within that time? 27 Wherefore I have not sinned against thee, but thou doest me wrong to war against me: the LORD the Judge be judge this day between the children of Israel and the children of Ammon. 28 Howbeit the king of the children of Ammon hearkened not unto the words of Jephthah which he sent him. 29 ¶ Then 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. 30 And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the LORD, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, 31 Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the LORD’s, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.** 32 ¶ So Jephthah passed over unto the children of Ammon to fight against them; and the LORD delivered them into his hands. 33 And he smote them from Aroer, even till thou 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.* 34 ¶ And 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.* 35 And it came to pass, when he saw her, that he rent his clothes, and said, Alas, my daughter! thou hast brought me very low, and thou art one of them that trouble me: for I have opened my mouth unto the LORD, and I cannot go back. 36 And she said unto him, My father, *if* thou hast opened thy mouth unto the LORD, do to me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth; forasmuch as the LORD hath taken vengeance for thee of thine enemies, *even* of the children of Ammon. 37 And 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.* 38 And he said, Go. And he sent her away *for* two months: and she went with her companions, and bewailed her virginity upon the mountains. 39 And 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,* 40 *That* the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in a year.** [Judges 10](/study/judges/10) [Judges 12](/study/judges/12) ## Commentary To verse 1 *JEPHTHAH* **‘Jephthah the Gileadite.’** ** [Judges 11:1](/kjv/judges/11/1)** ****I. One thing is plain on the surface of the history: Jephthah was neither a godless nor a selfish man.**—Not godless, for we find in the brief annals of his life more copious recognition of God than in the case of most of the other judges; and not selfish, because, forgetting his private wrongs, he devoted his life to the service of his country, and, overcoming his strongest feelings of natural affection, he did with his daughter according to his vow. **II. We shall be nearer the truth if we regard Jephthah as a good man, sadly misguided**; a man roughly trained, poorly educated, and very deficient in enlightened views; wishing to serve God, but in great error as to what would prove an acceptable service; a man in whose religion the ideas of his neighbours of Moab and Amnion had a strong though unknown influence; one who, with the deepest loyalty to God, had unconsciously come under the delusion that Jehovah would accept of such an offering as the neighbouring nations offered to their gods. We may, perhaps, class him with the woman in the Gospels with the issue of blood, in whom a powerful faith was combined with a miserable superstition; faith in the power of Jesus to heal, with a superstition that fancied that a cure might be snatched from Him before He knew. In this case Jesus, with admirable discrimination, at once rewarded the faith and rebuked the superstition. So in Jephthah a fearless loyalty and complete surrender of himself to God were united with a terrible fanaticism—a fanaticism that in the very height of triumph plunged him and his friends into the depth of anguish; that at the moment when his most eager desires were gratified inflicted on him the cruellest loss; that brought on his name a terrible stigma, and has made him from generation to generation an object of horror to almost every reader of the Bible. **III. In trying to estimate Jephthah aright it is necessary that we bear his early history vividly in mind.**—He had the grievous misfortune to have a wicked mother, a woman of abandoned character: and as in these circumstances his father could not have been much better, his childhood must have been very dreary. No good example, no holy home, no mother’s affection, no father’s wise and weighty counsel. It is as true now as then, that children born in such circumstances usually prove the scum of society, furnishing the largest share of dangerous and disorderly men and women. And no wonder, removed as they are from nearly all loving influences; never welcomed into the world as blessings, but regarded as troubles and burdens; the very stigma which attaches to them breaking down their self-respect, and making them an easy prey to those whose interest it is to drag them into the ways of sin. And even when, by God’s great mercy, such unfortunate children are brought under the power of grace, they often come before the world with a deformed or twisted religious character; great faults or flaws remain in it; it wants the roundness or completeness found, for example, in such men as Samuel or Timothy, who not only belonged to the Lord from childhood, but were brought up under the holiest influences, and in an atmosphere warm with all love and goodness. If Jephthah owed little to his parents, he owed less to his brothers. If he knew little of the sunbeams of parental love, he knew less of the amenities of brotherly affection. **Illustrations** (1) ‘You may be disreputable in birth, but illustrious in faith! You may have entered life by the back door, and in the dark, but you go forth into eternity by the front door amid the regret of hundreds, and be mourned as a hero and a saint. Remember that the sacred writer says: “What shall I more say? for time would fail to tell of Gideon, of Barak, of Samson, and of *Jephthah*.” Take heart; men will be quite glad to catch up any brickbat to throw at you, when they find that you are distancing them: but no weapon that is formed against you will prosper—by faith you will conquer.’ (2) ‘Jephthah the Gileadite was the most ill-used man in all the Old Testament, and he continues to be the most completely misunderstood, misrepresented, and ill-used man down to this day. Jephthah’s ill-usage began before he was born, and it was continued down to the last Old Testament Commentary and the last Bible Dictionary that treats of Jephthah’s name. The iron had entered Jephthah’s soul while yet he lay in his mother’s womb; and both his father and his brothers and the elders of Israel helped forward Jephthah’s affliction, till the Lord rose up for Jephthah and said, It is enough; took the iron out of His servant’s soul, and poured oil and wine into the lifelong wound. If at the death of his father Jephthah had got his proper portion of his father’s goods, then Jephthah might have become as great a prodigal as his brothers became. But the loss of earthly inheritance was to Jephthah, as it has been to so many men since his day, the gaining of an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, eternal in the heavens.’ ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/#website","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com","name":"Real Bible Believers","description":"RBB","publisher":{"@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/#/schema/person/e966585dde703268e7f6ae890ea98509"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/search?q={search_term_string}","query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/the-church-pulpit-commentary/judges/11#primaryimage","inLanguage":"en-US","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/_app/immutable/assets/missing.C7wGMEZ6.jpg","contentUrl":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/_app/immutable/assets/missing.C7wGMEZ6.jpg","width":672,"height":448,"caption":"Real Bible Believers"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/the-church-pulpit-commentary/judges/11#webpage","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/the-church-pulpit-commentary/judges/11","name":"Judges 11 - Study King James Bible with the church pulpit commentary","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/the-church-pulpit-commentary/judges/11#primaryimage"},"author":{"@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/#/schema/person/e966585dde703268e7f6ae890ea98509"},"description":"Read Judges 11 with the church pulpit commentary commentary. 1 Now Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty man of valour, and he was the son of an harlot: and Gilead begat Jephthah. 2 And Gilead’s wife bare him sons; an","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/the-church-pulpit-commentary/judges/11#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/the-church-pulpit-commentary/judges/11"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/the-church-pulpit-commentary/judges/11#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/","name":"Home"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study","name":"Study Bible"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/the-church-pulpit-commentary","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/the-church-pulpit-commentary","name":"the church pulpit commentary"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":4,"item":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/the-church-pulpit-commentary/judges","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/the-church-pulpit-commentary/judges","name":"Judges"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":5,"item":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/the-church-pulpit-commentary/judges/11","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/the-church-pulpit-commentary/judges/11","name":"11"}}]},{"@type":["Person","Organization"],"@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/#/schema/person/e966585dde703268e7f6ae890ea98509","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/#personlogo","inLanguage":"en-US","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/android-chrome-512x512.png","contentUrl":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/android-chrome-512x512.png","width":512,"height":512},"logo":{"@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/#personlogo"},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/RBiblebeliever","https://www.facebook.com/RBibleBelievers"]}]} ```