Judges 11:12-28

Amplified Bible

¹²Now Jephthah sent messengers to the king of the Ammonites, saying, “What is [the problem] between you and me, that you have come against me to fight in my land?” ¹³The Ammonites’ king replied to the messengers of Jephthah, “It is because Israel took away ^[a]my land when they came up from Egypt, from the [river] Arnon as far as the Jabbok and [east of] the Jordan; so now, return those lands peaceably.” ¹⁴But Jephthah sent messengers again to the king of the Ammonites, ¹⁵and they said to him, “This is what Jephthah says: ‘Israel did not take the land of Moab or the land of the Ammonites. ¹⁶For when they came up from Egypt, Israel walked through the wilderness to the Red Sea and came to Kadesh; ¹⁷then Israel sent messengers to the king of Edom, saying, “Please let us pass through your land,” but the king of Edom would not listen. Also they sent word to the king of Moab, but he would not consent. So Israel stayed at Kadesh. ¹⁸Then they went through the wilderness and went around the land of Edom and the land of Moab, and came to the east side of the land of Moab, and they camped on the other side of the [river] Arnon; but they did not enter the territory of Moab, for the Arnon was the [northern] boundary of Moab. ¹⁹Then Israel sent messengers to Sihon king of the Amorites, king of Heshbon, and Israel said to him, “Please let us pass through your land to our place.” ²⁰But Sihon did not trust Israel to pass through his territory; so Sihon gathered together all his people and camped at Jahaz and fought against Israel. ²¹The Lord, the God of Israel, gave Sihon and all his people into the hand of Israel, and they defeated them; so Israel took possession of all the land of the Amorites, the inhabitants of that country. ²²They took possession of all the territory of the Amorites, from the Arnon as far as the Jabbok, and from the wilderness [westward] as far as the Jordan. ²³^[b]And now the Lord God of Israel has dispossessed and driven out the Amorites from before His people Israel, so [why] should you possess it? ²⁴Do you not possess what Chemosh your god gives you to possess? And everything that the Lord our God dispossessed before us, we will possess. ²⁵Now are you any better than Balak the son of Zippor, king of Moab? Did he ever strive against Israel, or did he ever go to war against them? ²⁶While Israel lived in Heshbon and its villages, and in Aroer and its villages, and in all the cities along the banks of the Arnon for three hundred years, why did you not recover your lost lands during that time? ²⁷So I have not sinned against you, but you are doing me wrong by making war against me; may the Lord, the [righteous] Judge, judge this day between the Israelites and the Ammonites.’” ²⁸But the king of the Ammonites disregarded the message of Jephthah, which he sent to him.

Read full chapter

Notas al pie

Judges 11:13 The land under discussion was actually Amorite territory when Israel entered and took possession of it three hundred years earlier.
Judges 11:23 Jephthah’s argument illustrates the essence of the conflict between Israel and its neighboring enemies. To a disinterested observer, occupancy of the land of Canaan might simply be a matter of conquest by the stronger warring nation, so no one could claim true ownership and the land would naturally change hands over the course of history. For Israel, however, possession of the land was the will of God, pitting the one true God against the false gods of foreign nations who were being dispossessed. These other nations understandably did not see things Israel’s way because they did not recognize the sovereignty of Israel’s God, and might have felt just as strongly about their own gods’ will for them to possess the land in question. Therefore the struggle for land was not just the result of pragmatism or greed, or even the basic desire to have a secure home and country. It was seamlessly interwoven in the fabric of faith, a non-negotiable element of one’s religion—or in Israel’s case, of faith in the true God, whom they frequently neglected or abandoned, to their own peril.