Judges 11:37

Jdg 11:37 And she said unto her father, Let this thing be done for me: let me alone two months, that I may go up and down upon the mountains, and bewail my virginity, I and my fellows.

Ver. 37. And bewail my virginity.] She saith, not the loss of my life, but the want of posterity; which in those days was counted a great curse.

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.

Jdg 11:37. That I may go up and down upon the mountains — Which she chose as a solitary place, and therefore fittest for lamentation. Bewail — That I shall die childless, which was esteemed both a curse and a disgrace for the Israelites, because such were excluded from that great privilege of increasing the holy seed, and contributing to the birth of the Messiah.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

For it was counted as a shame in Israel, to die without children, and therefore they rejoiced to be married.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

Verse 37. I and my fellows] Whether she meant the young women of her own acquaintance, or those who had been consecrated to God in the same way, though on different accounts, is not quite clear; but it is likely she means her own companions: and her going up and down upon the mountains may signify no more than her paying each of them a visit at their own houses, previously to her being shut up at the tabernacle; and this visiting of each at their own home might require the space of two months. This I am inclined to think is the meaning of this difficult clause.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

(37) Let me alone two months.—There was nothing which forbade this postponement for a definite purpose and period of the fulfilment of the vow. For the phrase “let me alone,” see Deu_9:14; 1Sa_11:3.

And bewail my virginity.—The thought which was so grievous to the Hebrew maiden was not death, but to die unwedded and childless. This is the bitterest wail of Antigone also, in the great play of Sophocles (Ant. 890); but to a Hebrew maid the pang would be more bitter, because the absence of motherhood cut off from her, and, in this instance, from her house, the hopes which prophecy had cherished. Josephus makes the expression mean no more than “to bewail her youth,” neoteta (Jos. Antt. v. 7, § 10).

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

37. and go down upon the mountains] A slight emendation (weradhti for weyaradhti) improves the sense: and roam or wander restlessly; cf. Jer_2:31 (‘we roam at large’).

bewail my virginity] To be neither wife nor mother was considered a punishment and a reproach: cf. Gen_16:1-5; Gen_30:23, 1Sa_1:10-11; 1Sa_1:15, Isa_4:1, Luk_1:25. The ancient Greeks felt similarly1[45].

[45] See Livingstone, The Greek Genius (1912), p. 83 f.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

And it came to pass at the end of two months she returned to her father,.... For the request she made was not a pretence to make her escape out of his hands; but having done what she proposed to do, and the time fixed for it being come, she returned to her father's house, and delivered herself to him:

who did with her according to his vow which he had vowed: but what he did is a question, and which is not easily resolved; some think he really sacrificed her, through a mistaken sense of Lev 27:29 and which his action are accounted for through his living a military life, and in a distant part of the country, and at a time when idolatry had greatly prevailed in Israel, and to such a degree as it had not before, and no doubt that branch of it, sacrificing children to Molech; and Jephthah might think that though that was sinful, yet such a sacrifice might be acceptable to the Lord; and especially since his vow, as he thought, bound him to it; and how far the instance of Abraham offering up his son Isaac might encourage him to it, cannot be said: of this mind were Josephus (k), Jonathan Ben Uzziah the Targumist, and some other Jewish writers (l); and many of the ancient Christian fathers, and many modern authors of every name among Christians; and it has been thought that the story of Iphigenia, who Capellus (m) thinks is the same with Jepthigenia, that is, the daughter of Jephthah, and was slain by her father Agamemnon, having several circumstances in it similar to this, is taken from hence: and there is much such a case as this related (n) of Idomeneus, a king of the Cretians, who upon his return after the destruction of Troy, being in a tempest, vowed, should he be saved, that he would sacrifice the first he met with to the gods; and as it was his son he first met with, he sacrificed him; or, as others say, would have done it, but was prevented by the citizens, and who on this account drove him from his kingdom. But others are of opinion that what Jephthah did according to his vow was, that he shut up his daughter, and separated her from the company of men, and obliged her to live unmarried all her days, and therefore she is said to bewail her virginity. Kimchi and Ben Melech say, he built a house for her without the city, where she dwelt alone, and knew no man; and where her father supported her, and obliged her to live all her days; and Abarbinel thinks, that the Romanists from hence learnt to build their cloisters to put their nuns in; and so Ben Gersom interprets this vow of her being separated from men, and devoted to the service of God; and which is the sense of many Christian interpreters. Now though Jephthah had no such power over his daughter, as to oblige her to perpetual virginity, nor did his vow bind him to it; for persons devoted to the Lord were not obliged to abstain from marriage, nor have we any instances of a monastic life in those times, nor among the Jews at any time; yet as he did something not right, which he thought his vow obliged him to, one would be rather tempted to think, in charity to him, that of the two evils he did the least; for if she was put to death, it must be done either by the magistrates, or by the priests, or by Jephthah himself; neither of which is probable:

and she knew no man; never married, but lived and died a virgin: "and it was a custom in Israel"; the Targum adds,"that a man might not offer his son or his daughter for a burnt offering, as Jephthah the Gileadite did, and did not consult Phinehas the priest; for had he consulted Phinehas the priest, he would have redeemed her with a price;''so Jarchi, according to Lev 27:4 but each stood upon their honour, as the Jews say (o); Jephthah being a king would not go to Phinehas, and Phinehas being an high priest; and the son of an high priest, would not go to a plebeian; and so, between them both, the maiden was lost: but the custom refers to what follows.

(k) Antiqu l. 5. c. 7. sect. 10. (l) Bereshit Rabba, sect. 60, fol. 52. 3. Vajikra Rabba, sect. 37. fol. 176. 4. (m) De Voto Jephthae, sect. 12. (n) Alex. ab Alex. Genial. Dier. l. 3. c. 22. Servius in Virgil. Aeneid. l. 3. col. 693. in l. 11. col. 1634. (o) Bereshit Rabba & Vajikra, ut supra. (l)); Midrash Kohelet, fol. 81. 3.

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

Bewail my virginity - To become a wife and a mother was the end of existence to an Israelite maiden. The premature death of Jephthah’s daughter was about to frustrate this end.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Bewail my virginity. The bearing of children was much coveted under the Old Testament, when women might hope that from some child of theirs the Saviour of the world might one day spring. But under the New Testament virginity is preferred, 1 Corinthians vii. 35.

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

She chose

the mountains as a solitary place, and therefore fittest both for lamentations, and for her preparation for her approaching calamity.

Bewail my virginity; that I shall die childless, which was esteemed both a curse and a disgrace for the Israelites, Gen 30:23; 1Sa 1:6 7; Isa 4:1, because such were excluded from that great privilege of increasing the holy seed, and contributing to the birth of the Messiah, who was to be born of an Israelitish woman.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

37. Bewail my virginity — Mark, not to bewail her death, for that, by itself considered, might be regarded as a glorious end. Die she must, sooner or later, and no more honourable death could ever be her lot. But she would bewail that which gave her death its only woful pang, and was to her far worse than death itself; a thing above all others deplorable in the estimation of that age and race — the fact that, in the flower of youthful womanhood, she must close life without a husband and without a child, leaving no heir to her father’s house. It is difficult for us, with our loose attachments to the coming ages, and familiar with the modern prevalent lack of interest in posterity, and the noticeable desire among multitudes of females to remain childless, to appreciate the depth of feeling on this subject among the Hebrew women. A husbandless and childless state was a reproach to any marriageable female. Keil makes a misleading assertion when he says, “To mourn one’s virginity does not mean to mourn because one has to die a virgin, but because one has to live and remain a virgin.” More truly should it be said, that the expression has as much respect to the past as to the future, but contemplates not specially life or death, but the fact of virginity. Could Jephthah’s daughter only have perpetuated her father’s house and name; could it only have been that sons and daughters survived her, to take away her reproach among women, there would have been no pang in her death.

But why, some ask, if she was doomed to death, did she not rather spend those two months at home, and enjoy all the comfort she could during the short respite of her life? To one thus appointed to death, we answer, home affords no soul comforts, and earth’s festal scenes and sociality no pleasure. It is not human, under such circumstances, to find entertainment in the common joys of home. Far more congenial to the feelings of the dying maiden would be the mountain solitudes than any thing her father’s house could furnish. Then, also, the two months were asked, not for one more round of pleasures, but for mourning her virginity; and for that purpose the solitudes of the mountains, not the peopled town, with the presence of men, were appropriate.

But if, on the other hand, she knew she was to live and remain a virgin, and be shut up in seclusion for the rest of life, what sense or object in taking those two months to mourn? And in what sense would she be more really consecrated to celibacy after than during the two months of sorrow? Much more natural, as we conceive, would it have been for her, in that case, to have said: Let me stay at home, and enjoy the scenes of common life yet a month or two, since I must give all after-life to tears and solitude.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

And bewail my virginity. It is a striking evidence of the strong desire among Hebrew women to be mothers, as seen in Sarah, Rachel, Hannah, and others, that it was the prospect of dying unmarried which seemed to Jephthah"s daughter the saddest part of her fate. So in Psa_78:63, their maidens were not given to marriage is one of the items of the misery of Israel (see too ver. 39).

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Mountains - Which she chose as a solitary place, and therefore fittest for lamentation. Bewail - That I shall die childless, which was esteemed both a curse and a disgrace for the Israelites, because such were excluded from that great privilege of increasing the holy seed, and contributing to the birth of the Messiah.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

To grieve on the hills. This word refers to bewailing. Similarly, "On its roofs and thoroughfares, total wailing, weeping grief." Weeping so intense that it causes a physical breakdown. Midrash Agada: R' Tanchuma expounded, On the hills; before the Sanhedrin—perhaps they may find a loophole in your vow.

Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.