Judges chapter 11 part 1

After reading chapter 11:

*Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty warrior. (Gilead is a region east of the Jordan) His father's name was Gilead; his mother was a prostitute. Gilead's sons by his wife drove Jephthah away because they didn't want him to have a share of their father's inheritance. Jephthah settled in Tob where a band of adventurers gathered around him. Sounds a little bit like Robin Hood and his merry men.

* When the Ammonites were making war on the Israelites, the elders of Gilead asked Jephthah to be their commander against them. (See chapter 10) Jephthah was understandably peeved that they needed him, now that they were in trouble, when they had rejected him before. The elders asked him to forget all that. Jephthah wanted confirmation that he would be the leader of Gilead if he could defeat the Ammonites. The elders swore that he would. So, he went to Mizpah with the elders and took an oath of office in front of Yahweh. Mizpah apparently means watchtower and there are a few possibly different Mizpah's mentioned in the bible, which makes sense because a watchtower would be a good thing for an area to have, considering all the wars and raids in the region. What doesn't make sense is how a person could "go before Yahweh" at Mizpah. What did that entail? I thought all the Yahweh ritual stuff had been assigned to Shiloh. However, there has been no mention of Shiloh yet in this book.

*Then Jephthah sent a message to the Ammonite King asking why he was attacking Gilead. The reply was that when the Israelites had travelled through the land during the exodus, they had taken land which originally belonged to the Ammonites. They wanted it back. Jephthah sent a message back saying that the king had his facts wrong. That land used to belong to the Amorites, not the Ammonites. Not only that, Yahweh had personally given them the victory over the people who used to live in that land. The Israelites had to forcibly take it because the original inhabitants were rude and suspicious, unwilling to let over 2 million strangers parade through their land on their way to take over someone else's land. This proves that the Ammonites have no claim to the land. Besides, don't they also take whatever land their god Chemosh gives them? This is a brilliant example of the tu quoque argument. Notice also, that Jephthah is acknowledging that the god Chemosh speaks to the Ammonites, just like Yahweh speaks to the Israelites. So, is he intimating both gods are real, or both gods are fictional?

*Then Jephthah goes on to argue that the king of Moab isn't suddenly trying to take back land that the Israelites were given by Yahweh. What makes the king of the Ammonites so high and mighty that he thinks he should take back land where the Israelites have lived for about three hundred years? Why now, at such a late date? The king of the Ammonites has no personal reason to do so. Plus, Yahweh will see that justice is done. The king ignored Jephthah's message.

*This passage helps us hang a date on these supposed events. Assuming the creationist stance that history began about 4,000 B.C.E., and taking all the dates from Genesis on literally, this would have taken place at approx. 1,000 B.C.E. This is a problem because it is supposed to be the traditional date of the start of the Israelite monarchy. One of the reasons they don't match up is because even the biblical literalists do not take every single year count mentioned in the Old Testament literally. They also try to make things match up with extra information from the New Testament which skews the dates. I noticed this some time back, but can't remember where. I will try to find  out where I first discovered the disparity.