Tag Info

In support of the human sacrifice theory, Kaiser in Hard Sayings of the Bible says: People, even servants of God, do horrid things. This era was very corrupt and there is no reason to see Jephthah as substantially different than his contemporaries. The sacrifice of his daughter is the most natural way to interpret the text. Gleason Archer (who opposes ...

The entire book of Judges documents the failure of leadership in Israel from the time of Joshua to Saul. In fact, the phrase "In those days there was no king in Israel" is repeated four times. Although the text seems to be structured chronologically, the stories are actually arraigned geographically from south to north, which allows the accounts to follow ...

The barley cake does not have the gluten content of wheat, so it does not stick together like wheat bread. In this case it is not even a proper leavened loaf, an "ugah", just a lowly "tslil', unleavened, roasted dough eaten only by the poorest of the poor. As it rolls towards the camp of Midian it breaks into crumbs, just as Gideon's forces are progressively ...

There is no mention in the text of dedication or of the tabernacle, and so the main thing recommending an interpretation involving those things is the bewailing of virginity. I won't go so far as to say that a reading of dedication to tabernacle service is completely unwarranted; but I want to give some push back to some of the points in Frank Luke's answer ...

The NET Bible includes this translator's note: 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 ...

Rashi is the "great compiler" among the rabbis. Most of what he writes came from earlier sources, not his own innovation. In this case, the rabbis who preceded Rashi are starting from the text of 12:7, which clearly says "cities", and asking the question: how could one man be buried in more than one city? That the text is of divine origin, and thus ...

Rashi comments on textual problems, he never gives general information that an astute reader could otherwise independently infer. The textual problem in Judges 12:7 is the place name of Jephtah's burial. The problem is that the place name ערי גלעד "Arei Gilaad" is not otherwise known to us from the OT, and that the form of the name looks like a plural in ...

The first two paragraphs are mostly in response to @Lance Roberts' post, but I do feel that they contribute to this discussion. Deborah was already in a position of authority within Israel as a prophetess and also as a judge. Those who support the complementarian position often state that Deborah was most likely only a leader because men had failed to step ...

The Hebrew looks like this: בִּפְרֹעַ פְּרָעוֹת בְּיִשְׂרָאֵל... The difficulty in translating this verse stems from the ambiguity inherent in the Hebrew root word para פרע, which appears twice in a row (as though for emphasis) in the first two words of this verse. (The third word of the verse, is "Israel.") The word para can be translated as: Burst ...

The Hebrew word used is “הלא” ha-lo, which translates to the cumbersome “is it not so that…”. (JPS 1917 ed. translates this verse as “Hath not the LORD, the God of Israel, commanded, saying…”.) It’s a fairly common literary convention within the Bible to jump into the middle of a conversation. (Cf. Exodus 10; where before most of the plagues we overhear ...

I think it's best to understand the then as applying to both the angel of the LORD ascending in the flame as well as departing, taking the incident as a whole. When Manoah and his wife see the angel of the LORD ascend in the flame, they both fall with their faces to the ground - very typical of a theophany (e.g. Genesis 17:1-3, Exodus 3:6, Numbers 22:31, ...

For context, the Gileadites were the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh who chose to occupy the land on the opposite side of the Jordan from the rest of Israel. This region was called Gilead. The Ephraimites had crossed the Jordan in order to confront the Gileadites, but were defeated by their fellow Israelites. The passage in question ...

I'll take a stab at this one: The author of Judges (as also the authors of all the other books of the Bible) had a particular objective in mind when penning his book. Unlike modern-day historical textbooks or contemporary novels, the books of the Bible were written with a theological purpose, not a commercial or encyclopedic one. This isn't to say that they ...

According to Brown, Driver, and Briggs Lexicon, the word translated "then" is 'az which carries a meaning of "at that time." I would understand the first part of this verse as being parenthetical to the statement of verse 20. Judges 13:19-21 (ESV) 19 So Manoah took the young goat with the grain offering, and offered it on the rock to the LORD, to the ...

In the Samson cycle of stories, the wedding riddle is a metaphor of the impossible situation that Samson, and by identification, the Israelites, are in. This cycle of stories deals with the ambivalent nature of the relationship with the Philistines. On the one hand, they are bitterest of enemies. One the other, there is rampant assimilation into Philistine ...

It does remind one of "What have I got in my pocket?", doesn't it? In the Hobbit, Bilbo and Gollum agree that, since it isn't an entirely proper riddle, Gollum will get three guesses. It seems that Samson and his potential in-laws agreed to a similar solution. Reading on: And in three days they could not solve the riddle. On the fourth day they ...

"Okay, there's an eater. Bulldozers 'eat' buildings, don't they? Oh wait, we haven't invented those yet. Venus flytrap? Nope, haven't discovered those yet. OK, must be an animal. Or maybe a bunch of them like a swarm of locusts. Oh, but it's strong...maybe a dragon or a leviathan or a lion or a bull.." "Now, something sweet. Hmm. Gummy bears? Snickers? ...

There isn’t any historical consensus regarding the origins of leavened bread. However, the earliest archaeological evidence that we have happens to be from ancient Egypt: The development of leavened bread can also probably be traced to prehistoric times. Yeast spores occur everywhere, including the surface of cereal grains, so any dough left to rest ...

Rik Smits, in "The Puzzle of Left-Handedness", points out that slingers and other fighters really needed to be sorted by handedness. They stood close together, and if they were mixed up, people were going to get hurt. 10% of the male population, more or less, appears to have been left-handed since the birth of Homo Sapiens. Rather than try to intersperse ...

The Hebrew idiom for left handed is 'bound/restricted in the right hand' so that in Judges 20:16, which is the verse you are describing, it reads בָּח֔וּר אִטֵּ֖ר (chosen men bound). Therefore, I think the Net Bible is correct: The phrase, which refers to Ehud, literally reads “bound/restricted in the right hand,” apparently a Hebrew idiom for a ...

Gideon's name in Hebrew, גדעון (<H1439>), is derived from גָּדַע (<H1438>): to cut, hew, chop, cut down, hew down, hew off, cut off, cut in two, shave off Therefore, it has a strong connotation with violence and destruction. It's the verb used in Isaiah 10:33 to describe the destruction God will inflict on Israel's enemies: Lo! The Sovereign ...

Isaiah 3:12a states (ESV): My people — infants are their oppressors, and women rule over them. This is showing one of the signs of affliction upon Israel for their disobedience. We see in Judges where at this time the men were quite passive. In Judges 4:8 we see after Deborah asked Barak the military leader to go to fight, his response showing a real ...

The context seems to indicate a local population, that is, within view if the battle near the Jezreel valley. That would probably rule out Simeon, the southernmost tribe, Judah which was south of Jerusalem, and Levy who was without a specific geographic inheritance except for the six designated cities of refuge, none of which are near the Jezreel valley to ...

I would go with the following (1) And Dvorah did sing, and Varak son of of Avino'am,(S) on that day,(R) saying(S): (2) In Israel's wild-haired outburst, in volunteering, a nation sanctified Yahweh. Listen, kings, attention nobles, (S) I shall, to Yahweh, I shall sing. My tune is(R) to Yahweh, God of Israel. (3) Yahweh, in exiting Sa'ir, in exiting Edom's ...

Rashi says she was killed: and it was a statute: They decreed that no one should do this anymore (i.e., they publicized that no one should offer a human being), because had Jephthah gone to Phinehas or vice versa, he would have nullified his (i.e., Jephthah’s) vow (i.e., he would have instructed him what the law is in such an instance). However, ...

Gaal the son of Ebal had compared Abimelech with feckless Shechem, the son of Hamor the Hivite (compare Judges 9:28 with Genesis 34:2). To offer a better alternative to the men of the town of Shechem, Gaal the son of Ebal compared himself with Hamor the Hivite, who of course was the father of feckless Shechem. (Feckless Shechem ended up destroying his family ...

In addition to the above we can be certain that Jephthah did not sacrifice his daughter as a literal human sacrficice because such a thing was not practiced by true worshipers of Jehovah (Yahweh). It was a characteristic of cruel pagan worship to Baal and Chemosh but not to the true God. Jehovah's view of such sacrifices is plainly seen at Jeremiah 7:31. He ...