Judges 12 · a question people ask
Was Jephthah right to fight Ephraim?
The chapter tells what happened and gives no verdict in its own words. The men of Ephraim came with a threat, "We will burn your house around you with fire!" (12:1). Jephthah answered that he had called them and they "didn’t save me out of their hand" (12:2), that "the LORD delivered them into my hand" (12:3), and asked, "Why then have you come up to me today, to fight against me?" (12:3). Then he "gathered together all the men of Gilead, and fought with Ephraim" (12:4), and at the fords "forty-two thousand of Ephraim fell" (12:6). Both readings below agree on those verses, and that the text records no word from the LORD about this battle. Christians read it in two main ways.
How Christians read it
Where Christians differ, Favor sets out the main views side by side and doesn't pick one.
Defending his house
Those who hold this view note that Ephraim came with a threat against Jephthah's house (12:1) and, in his words, "to fight against me" (12:3). They take him at his word that he had called Ephraim and they didn't come (12:2), and note that he gives the victory over Ammon to the LORD: "the LORD delivered them into my hand" (12:3). They read the battle as Jephthah defending himself against men of Israel who had come to fight him.
Judges 12:1-3
Recorded, not approved
Those who hold this view note that against Ammon the text says, "Then the LORD’s Spirit came on Jephthah" (11:29) and "the LORD delivered them into his hand" (11:32), but says nothing of the LORD in the battle with Ephraim (12:4-6). They note that at the fords the men were killed as they tried to cross, "Whenever a fugitive of Ephraim said, ‘Let me go over’" (12:5), and they set the chapter beside Ephraim's almost identical complaint to Gideon, which ended when "their anger was abated toward him" (8:3).
Judges 11:29 · Judges 11:32 · Judges 12:4-6 · Judges 8:1-3