Matthew Henry on Judges 11:12-28
We have here the treaty between Jephthah, now judge of Israel, and the king of the Ammonites (who is not named), that the controversy between the two nations might, if possible, be accommodated without the effusion of blood.
I. Jephthah, as one having authority, sent to the king of Ammon, who in this war was the aggressor, to demand his reasons for invading the land of Israel: "Why hast thou come to fight against me in my land? Jdg 11:12. Had I come first into thy land to disturb thee in thy possession, this would have been reason enough for fighting against me, for how must force be repelled but by force? but what hast thou to do to come thus in a hostile manner into my land?" so he calls i…
Read the whole note in the consoleJamieson-Fausset-Brown on Judges 11:13
the king of Ammon . . ., Because Israel took away my land--(See on Deu 2:19). The subject of quarrel was a claim of right advanced by the Ammonite monarch to the lands which the Israelites were occupying. Jephthah's reply was clear, decisive, and unanswerable;--first, those lands were not in the possession of the Ammonites when his countrymen got them, and that they had been acquired by right of conquest from the Amorites [Jdg 11:21]; secondly, the Israelites had now, by a lapse of three hundred years of undisputed possession, established a prescriptive right to the occupation [Jdg 11:22-23]; and thirdly, having received a grant of them from the Lord, his people were entitled to maintain the…
Read the whole note in the consoleJohn Gill on Judges 11:16
But when Israel came up from Egypt,.... In order to go to the land of Canaan, which was higher than the land of Egypt, which lay low (k):
and walked through the wilderness unto the Red sea; which is to be understood not of their walking to it; when they first came out of Egypt, they indeed then came to the edge of the wilderness of Etham, and so to the Red sea, and walked through it as on dry land, and came into the wilderness of Shur, Sin, and Sinai; and after their departure from Mount Sinai they came into the wilderness of Paran, in which they were thirty eight years; and this is the wilderness meant they walked through, and came to Eziongaber, on the shore of the Red sea, Numbers 33:35.…
