Judges 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.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(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 Deuteronomy 9:14; 1Samuel 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).

Benson Commentary

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.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

11:29-40 Several important lessons are to be learned from Jephthah's vow. 1. There may be remainders of distrust and doubting, even in the hearts of true and great believers. 2. Our vows to God should not be as a purchase of the favour we desire, but to express gratitude to him. 3. We need to be very well-advised in making vows, lest we entangle ourselves. 4. What we have solemnly vowed to God, we must perform, if it be possible and lawful, though it be difficult and grievous to us. 5. It well becomes children, obediently and cheerfully to submit to their parents in the Lord. It is hard to say what Jephthah did in performance of his vow; but it is thought that he did not offer his daughter as a burnt-offering. Such a sacrifice would have been an abomination to the Lord; it is supposed she was obliged to remain unmarried, and apart from her family. Concerning this and some other such passages in the sacred history, about which learned men are divided and in doubt, we need not perplex ourselves; what is necessary to our salvation, thanks be to God, is plain enough. If the reader recollects the promise of Christ concerning the teaching of the Holy Spirit, and places himself under this heavenly Teacher, the Holy Ghost will guide to all truth in every passage, so far as it is needful to be understood.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

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.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

34-40. Jephthah came to Mizpeh unto his house, and, behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances—The return of the victors was hailed, as usual, by the joyous acclaim of a female band (1Sa 18:6), the leader of whom was Jephthah's daughter. The vow was full in his mind, and it is evident that it had not been communicated to anyone, otherwise precautions would doubtless have been taken to place another object at his door. The shriek, and other accompaniments of irrepressible grief, seem to indicate that her life was to be forfeited as a sacrifice; the nature of the sacrifice (which was abhorrent to the character of God) and distance from the tabernacle does not suffice to overturn this view, which the language and whole strain of the narrative plainly support; and although the lapse of two months might be supposed to have afforded time for reflection, and a better sense of his duty, there is but too much reason to conclude that he was impelled to the fulfilment by the dictates of a pious but unenlightened conscience.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

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, Genesis 30:23 1 Samuel 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.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

And she said unto her father, let this thing be done for me,.... She had but one favour to ask of him, which she thought might be granted, without any breach of the vow:

let me alone two months she desired such a space of time might be allowed her before the vow took place; and the rather she might be encouraged to expect that her request would be granted, since no time was fixed by the vow for the accomplishment of it, and since the time she asked was not very long, and the end to be answered not unreasonable

that I may go up and down upon the mountains; or, "ascend upon the mountains" (h); Jepthah's house in Mizpeh being higher than the mountains; or there might be, as Kimchi and Ben Melech note, a valley between that and the mountains, to which she descended in order to go up to the mountains; see Judges 9:25 these she chose to make her abode, and take her walks in, during the time she asked, as being most fit for retirement and solitude; where she might give up herself to meditation and prayer, and conversation with her fellow virgins she would take with her, and so be wrought up to a greater degree of resignation and submission to her father's will, and to the will of God in it, as she might suppose:

and bewail my virginity, I and my fellows; the virgins her companions; this she proposed to be the subject that she and her associates would dwell upon, during this time of solitude; and the rather, as this may be thought to be the thing contained in the vow, that as she was a virgin, so she should continue; by which means she would not be the happy instrument of increasing the number of the children of Israel, nor of being the progenitor of the Messiah; upon which accounts it was reckoned in those times to be very grievous and reproachful to live and die without issue, and so matter of lamentation and weeping.

(h) "et descendam super montes", Pagninus, Montanus; "descendamque ad montes", Tigurine version.

Geneva Study Bible

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 {p} bewail my virginity, I and my fellows.

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

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

37. and go down upon the mountains] A slight emendation (weradhti for weyaradhti) improves the sense: and roam or wander restlessly; cf. Jeremiah 2:31 (‘we roam at large’).

bewail my virginity] To be neither wife nor mother was considered a punishment and a reproach: cf. Genesis 16:1-5; Genesis 30:23, 1 Samuel 1:10-11; 1 Samuel 1:15, Isaiah 4:1, Luke 1:25. The ancient Greeks felt similarly1[45].

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

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 37. - 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 Psalm 78:63, their maidens were not given to marriage is one of the items of the misery of Israel (see too ver. 39). Judges 11:37

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

The daughter, observing that the vow had reference to her (as her father in fact had, no doubt, distinctly told her, though the writer has passed this over because he had already given the vow itself in Judges 11:31), replied, "Do to me as has gone out of thy mouth (i.e., do to me what thou hast vowed), since Jehovah has procured the vengeance upon thine enemies the Ammonites." She then added (Judges 11:37), "Let this thing be done for me (equivalent to, Let this only be granted me); let me alone two months and I will go," i.e., only give me two months to go, "that I may go down to the mountains (i.e., from Mizpeh, which stood upon an eminence, to the surrounding mountains and their valleys) and bewail my virginity, I and my friends." בּתוּלים does not mean "youth" (נעוּרים), but the condition of virginity (see Leviticus 21:13). The Kethibh רעיתי is a less common form of רעותי (Keri).