Judges 11:28

Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex)

English Translation

However the king of the children of Ammon didn't listen to the words of Jephthah which he sent him.

World English Bible · Public Domain

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יִפְתָּ֔ח

Yiphtâch

H3316

“Jephthah”

Noun, Proper

Appears 30× in the Hebrew Bible
First appears at Joshua 15:43

Full BDB Definition

Origin: from H6605

TWOT: None

Jephthah or Jiphtah = "he opens" - a son of Gilead and a concubine and the judge who defeated the Ammonites; after the victory because of a vow taken before the battle he sacrificed his daughter as a burnt offering (noun proper masculine) - a city in Judah (noun proper locative)

About this verse

These counts appear in no published source. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged text and Lemma’s own curated glosses. What Lemma adds →

11: words
10: distinct lemmas
Historical: section

Shared distinctive vocabulary

יִפְתָּ֔ח Jephthah H3316 occurs in 26 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:

Grammatical profile

2 verbs
5 nouns
2 prepositions
2 particles

Verb forms

שָׁמַ֔ע Qal · Perfect
שָׁלַ֖ח Qal · Perfect

Repetition

A word recurs within this verse — often emphatic in Hebrew:

אֶל to H413 ×2

Hebrew & Septuagint length

In English translation the verse runs 19 words from the Hebrew and 20 from the Septuagint (LXX English) — closely comparable.

A rough comparison of the two English renderings, which tokenize alike — not a word-level alignment.

Word counts can differ between the Hebrew and the Greek without any difference in meaning — e.g. the Hebrew direct-object marker אֵת has no separate Greek word, and Greek often adds the article ὁ.

In the original languages it is 11 Hebrew tokens and 13 Greek tokens — but the two are counted differently (Hebrew bundles its prefixes and suffixes into one token; the Greek is in lemma form), so that isn’t a like-for-like length.

Cross-references

Topical passages linked to Judges 11:28 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.

2 Kings 14:11 But Amaziah would not hear. So Jehoash king of Israel went up; and he and Amaziah king of Judah looked one another in the face at Beth-shemesh, which belongs to Judah.
Proverbs 16:18 Pride goes before destruction, And a haughty spirit before a fall.

Cross-references courtesy of OpenBible.info (CC BY 4.0).

Hebrew and Greek witnesses Masoretic Hebrew ↔ Greek Septuagint

The same verse in the two great witnesses to the Old Testament, shown verse-for-verse.

These are two independent witnesses, not word-aligned to each other, and the Septuagint is shown in lemma (dictionary) form.

Hebrew Judges 11:28 Masoretic · Westminster Leningrad Codex

וְלֹ֣א שָׁמַ֔ע מֶ֖לֶךְ בְּנֵ֣י עַמּ֑וֹן אֶל דִּבְרֵ֣י יִפְתָּ֔ח אֲשֶׁ֥ר שָׁלַ֖ח אֵלָֽיו

However the king of the children of Ammon didn't listen to the words of Jephthah which he sent him.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Greek LXX Judges 11:28 Septuagint · lemma form

καί οὐ ἀκούω βασιλεύς υἱός αμμων ὁ λόγος ιεφθαε ὅς ἀποστέλλω πρός αὐτός

But the king of the children of Ammon listened not to the words of Jephthae, which he sent to him.

LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) · Public Domain

Hebrew: Westminster Leningrad Codex (CC BY 4.0). Greek: Septuagint (public domain); English from LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) (Public Domain). How the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew →

Targum (Aramaic paraphrase)

The Targum is the ancient Jewish Aramaic paraphrase of the Hebrew Scriptures — an interpretive translation, not the Hebrew text itself. Onkelos (literal) and Pseudo-Jonathan (expansive) render the Torah, and Jonathan the Prophets. Coverage is partial: where no permissively-licensed English translation exists for a verse, only the Aramaic is shown. This is verse-level text, not a word-by-word alignment to the Hebrew.

Targum Jonathan Prophets (Joshua–Malachi)

וְלָא קַבֵּיל מַלְכָּא דִבְנֵי עַמוֹן לְפִתְגָמֵי יִפְתָּח דִשְׁלַח לְוָתֵיהּ:

(no public-domain English translation for this verse)

Targum Jonathan — Aramaic: “Mikraot Gedolot” (public domain). English: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “London "Chaldee Paraphrase," 1871” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.

Commentary

Notes on Judges 11:28 from classic Christian and Jewish commentators (each source and its license shown beneath its notes). The classic Christian expositions comment on the surrounding passage and are grouped to its opening verse, so a note may address several verses; the Jewish commentaries on the Tanakh (Rashi and others) are per-verse, so they appear only where the commentator wrote on this verse.

Lemma curates 59 commentaries, every one of them public domain or Creative Commons licensed, each selected and text-cleaned for this edition rather than reprinted as found. About our sources →

Trapp's Complete Commentary

John Trapp

Jdg 11:28 Howbeit the king of the children of Ammon hearkened not unto the words of Jephthah which he sent him.

Ver. 28. Hearkened not to the words of Jephthah.] For his ears were stopped with pertinacity, pride, and covetousness. God also hath a controversy against him, and a purpose to destroy him.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown

Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown

Howbeit the king of the children of Ammon hearkened not unto the words of Jephthah--His remonstrances to the aggressor were disregarded, and war being inevitable, preparations were made for a determined resistance.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(28) Hearkened not.—We are not told of any counter-arguments. Probably the king of Ammon cared only for the argument of the sword—

“The good old rule

Contented him, the simple plan

That they should get who have the power,

And they should keep who can.”

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

John Gill's Exposition

And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the Lord,.... Before he set out for the land of the children of Ammon, and to fight with them; hoping that such a religious disposition of mind would be regarded by the Lord, and be acceptable to him, and he should be blessed with success in his enterprise:

and said, if thou shall without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands; though he was assured of the justness of his cause, and of his call to engage in it, he seems to have some little diffidence in his mind about the success of it; at least, was not fully certain of it.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Lesson kit

Teaching starters — assembled from the data on this page, not authored interpretation. Every prompt links to the verse data it draws on. Edit before teaching.

Judges, in the Historical, opens this verse with 11 words (10 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is Yiphtâch (“Jephthah”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.

Discussion questions

The word Yiphtâch carries the sense “Jephthah.” How does it shape the verse?
Joshua 15:43 shares the word «Jephthah» with this verse. How do the two illuminate each other?
“to” occurs 2× in this one verse. What is the effect of the repetition?
The translations on this page render this verse differently — a whole-verse word diff, not a word-by-word alignment. What might account for the different wordings?
The verb «שָׁמַ֔ע» is Qal Perfect. How does its form color the action?
Reading how Trapp's Complete Commentary and Jamieson, Fausset & Brown read this verse, where do the two commentators agree and where do they part?

Things to notice

This verse counts 11 Hebrew ↔ 13 Greek words.
These translations choose different wording for 9 words in this verse.
“to” occurs 2× in this single verse.
10 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 11 words in this verse.