Bible Strands
Judges 11:2
And Gilead’s wife bore him sons who grew up, drove Jephthah out, and said to him, “You shall have no inheritance in our father’s house, because you are the son of another woman.”
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Jephthah’s half-brothers, sons of Gilead’s legitimate wife, confront him after reaching maturity to formally strip him of his claim to the family estate.
The words — וַ/יְגָרְשׁ֣וּ (va/y.ga.re.Shu) = and they drove out, denotes the legal expulsion, while בְּנֵי הָ/אִשָּׁ֜ה (ve.nei ha./'i.Shah) = sons of the wife, appears in the verse to distinguish the half-brothers from Jephthah’s mother’s status.
The thread — The expulsion motif echoes the family dispossession in Genesis 21:10, while the status-based exclusion of illegitimate offspring anticipates Deuteronomy 23:2.
Why it lands — It demands recognition that kinship ties do not guarantee inheritance rights, forcing a reader to weigh legal boundary against familial loyalty.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
And Gilead’s wife bare him sons; and his wife’s sons grew up, and they thrust out Jephthah, and said unto him, Thou shalt not inherit in our father’s house; for thou art the son of a strange woman.
Cross-references
- Genesis 12:10 Now there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe.
- Deuteronomy 23:2 No one of illegitimate birth may enter the assembly of the LORD, nor may any of his descendants, even to the tenth generation.
- Proverbs 2:16 It will rescue you from the forbidden woman, from the stranger with seductive words
- Proverbs 5:3 Though the lips of the forbidden woman drip honey and her speech is smoother than oil,
- Proverbs 5:20 Why be captivated, my son, by an adulteress, or embrace the bosom of a stranger?
- Proverbs 6:24 to keep you from the evil woman, from the smooth tongue of the adulteress.
- Galatians 4:30 But what does the Scripture say? “Expel the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman’s son.”