Judges 11:15-22

11:15 and said to him, “This is what Jephthah says, ‘Israel did not steal ¹  the land of Moab and the land of the Ammonites. 11:16 When they left ²  Egypt, Israel traveled ³  through the desert as far as the Red Sea and then came to Kadesh. 11:17 Israel sent messengers to the king of Edom, saying, “Please allow us ⁴  to pass through your land.” But the king of Edom rejected the request. ⁵  Israel sent the same request to the king of Moab, but he was unwilling to cooperate. ⁶  So Israel stayed at Kadesh. 11:18 Then Israel ⁷  went through the desert and bypassed the land of Edom and the land of Moab. They traveled east of the land of Moab and camped on the other side of the Arnon River; ⁸  they did not go through Moabite territory (the Arnon was Moab’s border). 11:19 Israel sent messengers to King Sihon, the Amorite king who ruled in Heshbon, and said to him, “Please allow us to pass through your land to our land.” ⁹  11:20 But Sihon did not trust Israel to pass through his territory. He ¹⁰  assembled his whole army, ¹¹  camped in Jahaz, and fought with Israel. 11:21 The Lord God of Israel handed Sihon and his whole army over to Israel and they defeated them. Israel took ¹²  all the land of the Amorites who lived in that land. 11:22 They took all the Amorite territory from the Arnon River on the south to the Jabbok River on the north, from the desert in the east to the Jordan in the west. ¹³ 

¹ tn Or “take”; or “seize.”

² tn Heb “For when they went up from.”

³ tn Or “went.”

⁴ tn Heb “me.” (Collective Israel is the speaker.)

⁵ tn Heb “did not listen.”

⁶ tn Heb “Also to the king of Moab he sent, but he was unwilling.”

⁷ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Israel; the pronoun in the Hebrew text represents a collective singular) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

⁸ tn The word “River” is not in the Hebrew text, but has been supplied in the translation for clarity.

⁹ tn Heb “to my place.”

¹⁰ tn Heb “Sihon.” The proper name (“Sihon”) has been replaced in the translation by the pronoun (“he”) because of English style; a repetition of the proper name here would be redundant in English.

¹¹ tn Heb “all his people” (also in the following verse).

¹² tn That is, took as its own possession.

¹³ tn Heb “from the Arnon to the Jabbok, and from the desert to the Jordan.” The word “River” has been supplied in the translation with “Arnon” and “Jabbok,” because these are less familiar to modern readers than the Jordan.