11:12 Jephthah sent messengers to the Ammonite king, saying, “Why have 7 you come against me to attack my land?”
12:2 Jephthah said to them, “My people and I were entangled in controversy with the Ammonites. 12 I asked for your help, but you did not deliver me from their power. 13
1 tn Heb “and he gathered to him.”
2 tn Heb “the house of Ephraim.”
3 tn Or “Israel experienced great distress.” Perhaps here the verb has the nuance “hemmed in.”
3 tn Heb “When the Ammonites fought with Israel.”
4 tn Or “elders.”
5 tn Heb “went to take Jephthah.”
4 tn Heb “What to me and to you that…?”
5 tn Or “take”; or “seize.”
6 tn Heb “the one coming out, who comes out from.” The text uses a masculine singular participle with prefixed article, followed by a relative pronoun and third masculine singular verb. The substantival masculine singular participle הַיּוֹצֵא (hayyotse’, “the one coming out”) is used elsewhere of inanimate objects (such as a desert [Num 21:13] or a word [Num 32:24]) or persons (Jer 5:6; 21:9; 38:2). In each case context must determine the referent. Jephthah may have envisioned an animal meeting him, since the construction of Iron Age houses would allow for an animal coming through the doors of a house (see R. G. Boling, Judges [AB], 208). But the fact that he actually does offer up his daughter indicates the language of the vow is fluid enough to encompass human beings, including women. He probably intended such an offering from the very beginning, but he obviously did not expect his daughter to meet him first.
7 tn The language is fluid enough to include women and perhaps even animals, but the translation uses the masculine pronoun because the Hebrew form is grammatically masculine.
8 tn Some translate “or,” suggesting that Jephthah makes a distinction between humans and animals. According to this view, if a human comes through the door, then Jephthah will commit him/her to the
7 tn Heb A man of great strife I was and my people and the Ammonites.”
8 tn Heb “hand.”