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Gilead had put it, because they were in distress. Nor did he come in his own strength.
The agreement made with the elders of Israel was solemnly ratified before Jehovah.
He that has a righteous cause will not shrink from having it thoroughly sifted. It was not
because Jephthah feared the battle, but because he wished to avoid bloodshed, that he
twice sent an embassy of remonstrance to the king of Ammon. The claims of the latter
upon the land between the Arnon and the Jabbok were certainly of the most shadowy
kind. That country had, at the time of the Israelitish conquest, belonged to Sihon, king
of the Amorites. True, the Amorites were not its original owners, having wrested the
land from Moab (Numbers 21:26). Balak might therefore have raised a claim; but,
although he hired Balaam to protect what still remained of his kingdom against a
possible attack by Israel, which he dreaded, he never attempted to recover what Israel
had taken from the Amorites, although it had originally been his. Moreover, even in
dealing with the Amorites, as before with Edom and Moab, whose territory Israel had
actually avoided by a long circuit, the utmost forbearance had been shown. If the
Amorites had been dispossessed, theirs had been the unprovoked attack, when Israel
had in the first place only asked a passage through their country. Lastly, if 300 years'^296
undisputed possession of the land did not give a prescriptive right, it would be difficult
to imagine by what title land could be held. Nor did Jephthah shrink from putting the
matter on its ultimate and best ground. Addressing the Ammonites, as from their
religious point of view they could understand it, he said: "And now Jehovah God of
Israel hath dispossessed the Amorites from before His people, and shouldest thou
possess it? Is it not so, that which Chemosh^297 thy god giveth thee to possess, that wilt
thou possess; and all that which Jehovah our God shall dispossess before us, that shall
we possess?" We do not wonder that of a war commenced in such a spirit we should be
told: "And the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah." Presently Jephthah passed all
through the land east of the Jordan, and its people obeyed his summons.
We are now approaching what to many will appear the most difficult part in the history
of Jephthah - perhaps among the most difficult narratives in the Bible. It appears that,
before actually going to war, Jephthah solemnly registered this vow: "If thou indeed
givest the children of Ammon into mine hand -and it shall be, the outcoming (one), that
shall come out from the door of my house to meet me on my returning in peace from the
children of Ammon, shall be to Jehovah, and I will offer that a burnt offering." We
know that the vow was paid. The defeat of the Ammonites was thorough and crushing.
But on Jephthah's return to his house the first to welcome him was his only daughter -
his only child - who at the head of the maidens came to greet the victor. There is a
terrible irony about those "timbrels and dances," with which Jephthah's daughter went,
as it were, to celebrate her own funeral obsequies, while the fond father's heart was
well-nigh breaking. But the noble maiden was the first to urge his observance of the
vow unto Jehovah. Only two months did she ask to bewail her maidenhood with her
(^)