Judges 11:12-28

Living Bible

¹² Then Jephthah sent messengers to the king of Ammon, demanding to know why Israel was being attacked. ¹³ The king of Ammon replied that the land belonged to the people of Ammon; it had been stolen from them, he said, when the Israelis came from Egypt; the whole territory from the Arnon River to the Jabbok and the Jordan was his, he claimed.

“Give us back our land peaceably,” he demanded.

^14-15 Jephthah replied, “Israel did not steal the land. ¹⁶ What happened was this: When the people of Israel arrived at Kadesh, on their journey from Egypt after crossing the Red Sea, ¹⁷ they sent a message to the king of Edom asking permission to pass through his land. But their petition was denied. Then they asked the king of Moab for similar permission. It was the same story there, so the people of Israel stayed in Kadesh.

¹⁸ “Finally they went around Edom and Moab through the wilderness, and traveled along the eastern border until at last they arrived beyond the boundary of Moab at the Arnon River; but they never once crossed into Moab. ¹⁹ Then Israel sent messengers to King Sihon of the Amorites, who lived in Heshbon, and asked permission to cross through his land to get to their destination.

²⁰ “But King Sihon didn’t trust Israel, so he mobilized an army at Jahaz and attacked them. ^21-22 But the Lord our God helped Israel defeat King Sihon and all your people, so Israel took over all of your land from the Arnon River to the Jabbok, and from the wilderness to the Jordan River.

²³ “So you see, it was the Lord God of Israel who took away the land from the Amorites and gave it to Israel. Why, then, should we return it to you? ²⁴ You keep whatever your god Chemosh gives you, and we will keep whatever Jehovah our God gives us! ²⁵ And besides, just who do you think you are? Are you better than King Balak, the king of Moab? Did he try to recover his land after Israel defeated him? No, of course not. ²⁶ But now after three hundred years you make an issue of this! Israel has been living here for all that time, spread across the land from Heshbon to Aroer, and all along the Arnon River. Why have you made no effort to recover it before now? ²⁷ No, I have not sinned against you; rather, you have wronged me by coming to war against me; but Jehovah the Judge will soon show which of us is right—Israel or Ammon.”

²⁸ But the king of Ammon paid no attention to Jephthah’s message.