1 Samuel 11:1

¹²“When you saw that Nahash the king of the children of Ammon came against you, you said to me, ‘No, but a king shall reign over us,’ when the LORD your God was your king.

³⁴Ben Hadad said to him, “The cities which my father took from your father I will restore. You shall make streets for yourself in Damascus, as my father made in Samaria.” “I”, said Ahab, “will let you go with this covenant.” So he made a covenant with him and let him go.

¹³He took one of the royal offspring,^[+] and made a covenant with him. He also brought him under an oath, and took away the mighty of the land,

⁸They said, “What one is there of the tribes of Israel who didn’t come up to the LORD to Mizpah?” Behold, no one came from Jabesh Gilead to the camp to the assembly.

²⁸They said, “We saw plainly that the LORD was with you. We said, ‘Let there now be an oath between us, even between us and you, and let’s make a covenant with you,

⁴Will he make a covenant with you, that you should take him for a servant forever?

³²You shall make no covenant with them, nor with their gods.

⁸The elders of Gilead said to Jephthah, “Therefore we have turned again to you now, that you may go with us and fight with the children of Ammon. You will be our head over all the inhabitants of Gilead.”

⁹Jephthah said to the elders of Gilead, “If you bring me home again to fight with the children of Ammon, and the LORD delivers them before me, will I be your head?”

¹⁰The elders of Gilead said to Jephthah, “The LORD will be witness between us. Surely we will do what you say.”

¹¹Then Jephthah went with the elders of Gilead, and the people made him head and chief over them. Jephthah spoke all his words before the LORD in Mizpah.

¹²Jephthah sent messengers to the king of the children of Ammon, saying, “What do you have to do with me, that you have come to me to fight against my land?”

¹³The king of the children of Ammon answered the messengers of Jephthah, “Because Israel took away my land when he came up out of Egypt, from the Arnon even to the Jabbok, and to the Jordan. Now therefore restore that territory again peaceably.”

¹⁴Jephthah sent messengers again to the king of the children of Ammon; ¹⁵and he said to him, “Jephthah says: Israel didn’t take away the land of Moab, nor the land of the children of Ammon; ¹⁶but when they came up from Egypt, and Israel went through the wilderness to the Red Sea, and came to Kadesh, ¹⁷then Israel sent messengers to the king of Edom, saying, ‘Please let me pass through your land;’ but the king of Edom didn’t listen. In the same way, he sent to the king of Moab, but he refused; so Israel stayed in Kadesh. ¹⁸Then they went through the wilderness, and went around the land of Edom, and the land of Moab, and came by the east side of the land of Moab, and they encamped on the other side of the Arnon; but they didn’t come within the border of Moab, for the Arnon was the border of Moab. ¹⁹Israel sent messengers to Sihon king of the Amorites, the king of Heshbon; and Israel said to him, ‘Please let us pass through your land to my place.’ ²⁰But Sihon didn’t trust Israel to pass through his border; but Sihon gathered all his people together, and encamped in Jahaz, and fought against Israel. ²¹The LORD, the God of Israel, delivered Sihon and all his people into the hand of Israel, and they struck them. So Israel possessed all the land of the Amorites, the inhabitants of that country. ²²They possessed all the border of the Amorites, from the Arnon even to the Jabbok, and from the wilderness even to the Jordan. ²³So now the LORD, the God of Israel, has dispossessed the Amorites from before his people Israel, and should you possess them? ²⁴Won’t you possess that which Chemosh your god gives you to possess? So whoever the LORD our God has dispossessed from before us, them will we possess. ²⁵Now are you anything better than Balak the son of Zippor, king of Moab? Did he ever strive against Israel, or did he ever fight against them? ²⁶Israel lived in Heshbon and its towns, and in Aroer and its towns, and in all the cities that are along the side of the Arnon for three hundred years! Why didn’t you recover them within that time? ²⁷Therefore I have not sinned against you, but you do me wrong to war against me. May the LORD the Judge be judge today between the children of Israel and the children of Ammon.”

²⁸However, the king of the children of Ammon didn’t listen to the words of Jephthah which he sent him. ²⁹Then the LORD’s Spirit came on Jephthah, and he passed over Gilead and Manasseh, and passed over Mizpah of Gilead, and from Mizpah of Gilead he passed over to the children of Ammon.

³⁰Jephthah vowed a vow to the LORD, and said, “If you will indeed deliver the children of Ammon into my hand, ³¹then it shall be, that whatever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, it shall be the LORD’s, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.”

³²So Jephthah passed over to the children of Ammon to fight against them; and the LORD delivered them into his hand. ³³He struck them from Aroer until you come to Minnith, even twenty cities, and to Abelcheramim, with a very great slaughter. So the children of Ammon were subdued before the children of Israel.

¹⁰The congregation sent twelve thousand of the most valiant men there, and commanded them, saying, “Go and strike the inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead with the edge of the sword, with the women and the little ones. ¹¹This is the thing that you shall do: you shall utterly destroy every male, and every woman who has lain with a man.” ¹²They found among the inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead four hundred young virgins who had not known man by lying with him; and they brought them to the camp to Shiloh, which is in the land of Canaan.

¹³The whole congregation sent and spoke to the children of Benjamin who were in the rock of Rimmon, and proclaimed peace to them. ¹⁴Benjamin returned at that time; and they gave them the women whom they had saved alive of the women of Jabesh Gilead. There still weren’t enough for them. ¹⁵The people grieved for Benjamin, because the LORD had made a breach in the tribes of Israel. ¹⁶Then the elders of the congregation said, “How shall we provide wives for those who remain, since the women are destroyed out of Benjamin?” ¹⁷They said, “There must be an inheritance for those who are escaped of Benjamin, that a tribe not be blotted out from Israel. ¹⁸However, we may not give them wives of our daughters, for the children of Israel had sworn, saying, ‘Cursed is he who gives a wife to Benjamin.’” ¹⁹They said, “Behold, there is a feast of the LORD from year to year in Shiloh, which is on the north of Bethel, on the east side of the highway that goes up from Bethel to Shechem, and on the south of Lebonah.” ²⁰They commanded the children of Benjamin, saying, “Go and lie in wait in the vineyards, ²¹and see, and behold, if the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance in the dances, then come out of the vineyards, and each man catch his wife of the daughters of Shiloh, and go to the land of Benjamin. ²²It shall be, when their fathers or their brothers come to complain to us, that we will say to them, ‘Grant them graciously to us, because we didn’t take for each man his wife in battle, neither did you give them to them; otherwise you would now be guilty.’”

²³The children of Benjamin did so, and took wives for themselves according to their number, of those who danced, whom they carried off. They went and returned to their inheritance, built the cities, and lived in them. ²⁴The children of Israel departed from there at that time, every man to his tribe and to his family, and they each went out from there to his own inheritance. ²⁵In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did that which was right in his own eyes.

¹¹When the inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead heard what the Philistines had done to Saul, ¹²all the valiant men arose, went all night, and took the body of Saul and the bodies of his sons from the wall of Beth Shan; and they came to Jabesh and burned them there. ¹³They took their bones and buried them under the tamarisk^[+] in Jabesh, and fasted seven days.