Judges 11:29 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Judges 11:29
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.
to cross over · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person masculine singular
children
בְּנֵ֥יbe.Nei
H1121
a son (as a builder of the family name) · noun, common masculine plural construct
Ammon
עַמּֽוֹןa.Mon
H5983
Ammon · proper noun, a man's name
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Numbers 11:25 And the LORD came down in a cloud, and spake unto him, and took of the spirit that was upon him, and gave it unto the seventy elders: and it…
Judges 3:10 And the Spirit of the LORD came upon him, and he judged Israel, and went out to war: and the LORD delivered Chushan-rishathaim king of Mesop…
Judges 13:25 And the Spirit of the LORD began to move him at times in the camp of Dan between Zorah and Eshtaol.
Judges 6:34 But the Spirit of the LORD came upon Gideon, and he blew a trumpet; and Abi-ezer was gathered after him.
Judges 10:17 Then the children of Ammon were gathered together, and encamped in Gilead. And the children of Israel assembled themselves together, and enc…
1 Samuel 10:10 And when they came thither to the hill, behold, a company of prophets met him; and the Spirit of God came upon him, and he prophesied among…
1 Samuel 16:13-15 Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the midst of his brethren: and the Spirit of the LORD came upon David from that day fo…
1 Chronicles 12:18 Then the spirit came upon Amasai, who was chief of the captains, and he said, Thine are we, David, and on thy side, thou son of Jesse: peace…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Judges 11:29–end
We have here Jephthah triumphing in a glorious victory, but, as an alloy to his joy, troubled and distressed by an unadvised vow.
I. Jephthah's victory was clear, and shines very brightly, both to his honour and to the honour of God, his in pleading and God's in owning a righteous cause. 1. God gave him an excellent spirit, and he improved it bravely, Jdg 11:29. When it appeared by the people's unanimous choice of him for their leader that he had so clear a call to engage, and by the obstinate deafness of the king of Ammon to the proposals of accommodation that he had so just a cause to engage in, then the Spirit of the Lord came upon him, and very much advanced his natural faculties, enduin…
HIS VOW. (Jdg 11:29-31)
Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah--The calm wisdom, sagacious forethought, and indomitable energy which he was enabled to display, were a pledge to himself and a convincing evidence to his countrymen, that he was qualified by higher resources than his own for the momentous duties of his office.
he passed over Gilead, and Manasseh--the provinces most exposed and in danger, for the purpose of levying troops, and exciting by his presence a widespread interest in the national cause. Returning to the camp at Mizpeh, he then began his march against the enemy. There he made his celebrated vow, in accordance with an ancient custom for generals at the outbreak…
Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah,.... The spirit of strength, as the Targum; of fortitude of mind, of uncommon valour and courage, and of zeal for God and Israel, and against their enemies; such a spirit as used to be given to men, when they were in an extraordinary manner raised up by the Lord, to be judges, saviours, and deliverers of his people; so that as Jephthah was before chosen by the people to be the general and head of the tribes beyond Jordan, he was raised up and qualified by the Lord now to be the judge of all Israel; of which the Spirit of the Lord coming on him was a sufficient proof and evidence:
and he passed over Gilead and Manasseh; the countries that belong…
The Church Fathers
About the sacrifice of the daughter of Jephthah, offered by his father in holocaust to God, usually presents a great problem, very difficult to solve. Jephthah had made a vow in the war, saying that if he won, he would offer a burnt offering to anyone who came to him from his home (Cf Jc 11,30.31). After the vote was made, he won, and, when his daughter presented himself, he fulfilled what he had promised. For some, the problem is that they want to know what this fact means and piously seek a solution. For others, who oppose with absurd impiety these holy Scriptures, the problem is that they claim as the main accusation against them the fact that the God of the law and the prophets has been pleased even in human sacrifices. To the calumnies of these we respond, first of all, by saying that to the God of the law and the prophets, and, to put it more expressly, to the God of Abraham and to the God of Isaac and to the God of Jacob (Cf Ex 3,16) he did not even like those sacrifices. in which holocausts of animals were offered. But since they had a meaning and were like shadows of future things, God wanted to recommend the things themselves meant by these sacrifices. And this was also a convenient reason for those sacrifices to be changed and not imposed now, even more, forbidden to offer them, so that we would not think that God really delighted in such sacrifices with a carnal affection. But we rightly wondered whether it was also convenient to indicate future things with human sacrifices, not so that with them we should be horrified and fear in this case the deaths of men, who anyway have to die anyway, if the that they would welcome with them that they would be put in the hands of God for an eternal reward. If this were true, this kind of sacrifice would not displease God. But the Scripture itself testifies with sufficient clarity that these sacrifices displease God. Because if, on the one hand, God wanted and commanded that all the firstborn sons be consecrated to him and that they be his; on the other hand, the firstborn of men were rescued (Cf Ex 13, 2.12.13), so that the people would not believe that they had to sacrifice their children born in the first place to God. In addition, this is even more clearly demonstrated by the fact that God reproves human sacrifices in such a way that he forbids these same sacrifices by detesting them in other nations and…
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Jephthah — Whom God sets free, or the breaker through, a “mighty man of valour” who delivered Israel from the oppression of the Ammonites (Judg. 11:1-33), and judged Israel six years (12:7). He has been…
Ammonites, The · Jephthah raised up to deliver Israel from — Jephthah raised up to deliver Israel from
Jephthah · General references — General references
Vows · if his — if his
War · God in — God in
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
Jephthah's Victory over the Ammonites. - As the negotiations with the king of the Ammonites were fruitless, Jephthah had no other course left than to appeal to the sword.
Jdg 11:29
In the power of the Spirit of Jehovah which came upon him (see Jdg 3:10), he passed through Gilead (the land of the tribes of Reuben and Gad between the Arnon and the Jabbok) and Manasseh (northern Gilead and Bashan, which the half tribe of Manasseh had received for a possession), to gather together an army to battle, and then went with the assembled army to Mizpeh-Gilead, i.e., Ramoth-mizpeh, where the Israelites had already encamped before his call (Jdg 10:17), that he might thence attach the Ammonites. עבר (to…
