Judges 11:38

38 "Go!" he said, and he sent her off for two months. She and her friends went to the mountains, and she cried about never being able to get married.

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 She said to him, "Father, you made a promise to the LORD. Do to me whatever you promised since the LORD has punished your enemy Ammon."
37 Then she said to her father, "Do me a favor. Give me two months for my friends and me to walk in the mountains and mourn that I will never have an opportunity to get married."
38 "Go!" he said, and he sent her off for two months. She and her friends went to the mountains, and she cried about never being able to get married.
39 At the end of those two months she came back to her father. He did to her what he had vowed, and she never had a husband. So the custom began in Israel
40 that for four days every year the girls in Israel would go out to sing the praises of the daughter of Jephthah, the man from Gilead.
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