Judges 11:38

38 "Go," he said. And he sent her away two months. So she left with her friends and mourned her virginity as she wandered through the mountains.

Judges 11:38 Meaning and Commentary

Judges 11:38

And he said, go
He granted her request at once:

and he sent her away for two months;
as she desired:

and she went with her companions, and bewailed her virginity upon the
mountains;
for the space of two months: the Jewish commentators make mention of an allegorical exposition of a writer F9 of theirs, who by mountains understands the sanhedrim, to whom she proposed to go, who perhaps might find a way for the loosing of the vow; but it is a question whether there was such a court then in Israel; and had there been one, and either she or her father had applied to it, in this case the priests would have pointed out what was to be done, and especially if the vow had any regard to the sacrifice of his daughter; and even to her virginity, which he had no power to oblige her to; but the literal sense is no doubt to be followed.


FOOTNOTES:

F9 Tanchuma.

Judges 11:38 In-Context

36 Then she said to him, "My father, you have given your word to the Lord. Do to me as you have said, for the Lord brought vengeance on your enemies, the Ammonites."
37 She also said to her father, "Let me do this one thing: Let me wander two months through the mountains with my friends and mourn my virginity."
38 "Go," he said. And he sent her away two months. So she left with her friends and mourned her virginity as she wandered through the mountains.
39 At the end of two months, she returned to her father, and he kept the vow he had made about her. And she had never been intimate with a man. Now it became a custom in Israel
40 [that] four days each year the young women of Israel would commemorate the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite.
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