Judges 11:11

The second half of the verse comes awkwardly after the announcement of Jephthah's promotion; and as it stands his wordsmust refer to Judges 11:9. But would he repeat them to give additional solemnity to the agreement? He would be more likely to make the elders repeat their promise before Jehovah. On the other hand 11b would come in most suitably after Judges 11:31. Accepting the terms offered by the sheikhs (11a), Jephthah makes his vow (Judges 11:30) before Jehovah, i.e. before the altar or pillar in the sanctuary or high-place of Mizpah (Judges 11:11 b), and then sets out to attack the Ammonites and defeats them (Judges 11:32). We must suppose that the original form of the narrative has been disturbed by the insertion of Judges 11:12. For Mizpah see on Judges 10:17.

The section Judges 11:12 purports to give an account of Jephthah's negotiations with the king of Ammon. First comes a formal protest against the Ammonite invasion with a reply (Judges 11:12): then the real subject of dispute follows the occupation of the territory between the Arnon and the Jabbok. After Judges 11:15 the Ammonites drop out to reappear in Judges 11:27, and the Moabites, who were the people really concerned with this district, enter the discussion. An appeal is made to past history as recorded in JE's narrative, Numbers 20:14-18; Numbers 21:21-24. At the period of the Israelite invasion the disputed territory was in the hands of the Amorites, from whom Israel won it by conquest (Judges 11:22); and in it Israel settled down (Judges 11:26). The argument, then, is aimed at the Moabites, not the Ammonites; the deity referred to in Judges 11:24 is Moabite, and so are the cities in Judges 11:26. In fact the whole passage has only a superficial connexion at the beginning and end with Jephthah's campaign; it looks like an insertion made at some period when Israel wished to put forward a claim to the district, and to judge from the dependence of the passage upon JE's narrative in Num., this period was later than the 8th century b.c. The territory in question changed masters frequently; Moabites and Amorites, Moabites and Israelites, held it in succession; see Num 21:26, 2 Samuel 8:2; Moabite Stone lines 5 ff., Isaiah 15:2 ff., Jeremiah 48:1 ff. The alternative course is to suppose that we have here a combination of two narratives of two campaigns, one against Ammon and the other against Moab; the above explanation, however, seems to involve fewer difficulties.