The princes and people of Gilead we left, in the close of the foregoing
chapter, consulting about the choice of a general, having come to this
resolve, that whoever would undertake to lead their forces against the
children of Ammon should by common consent be head over all the
inhabitants of Gilead. The enterprise was difficult, and it was fit
that so great an encouragement as this should be proposed to him that
would undertake it. Now all agreed that Jephthah, the Gileadite, was a
mighty man of valour, and very fit for that purpose, none so fit as he,
but he lay under three disadvantages:--1. He was the son of a harlot
(v. 1), of a strange woman (v. 2), one that was neither a wife nor a
concubine; some think his mother was a Gentile; so Josephus, who calls
him a stranger by the mother's side. An Ishmaelite, say the Jews. If
his mother was a harlot, that was not his fault, however it was his
disgrace. Men ought not to be reproached with any of the infelicities
of their parentage or extraction, so long as they are endeavouring by
their personal merits to roll away the reproach. The son of a harlot,
if born again, born from above, shall be accepted of God, and be as
welcome as any other to the glorious liberties of his children.
Jephthah could not read in the law the brand there put on the
Ammonites, the enemies he was to grapple with, that they should not
enter into the congregation of the Lord, but in the same paragraph he
met with that which looked black upon himself, that a bastard should be
in like manner excluded, Deut. xxiii. 2, 3. But if that law means, as
most probably it does, only those that are born of incest, not of
fornication, he was not within the reach of it. 2. He had been driven
from his country by his brethren. His father's legitimate children,
insisting upon the rigour of the law, thrust him out from having any
inheritance with them, without any consideration of his extraordinary
qualifications, which merited a dispensation, and would have made him a
mighty strength and ornament of their family, if they had overlooked
his being illegitimate and admitted him to a child's part, v. 2. One
would not have thought this abandoned youth was intended to be Israel's
deliverer and judge, but God often humbles those whom he designs to
exalt, and makes that stone the head of the corner which the builders
refused; so Joseph, Moses, and David, the three most eminent of the
shepherds of Israel, were all thrust out by men, before they were
called of God to their great offices. 3. He had, in his exile, headed a
rabble, v. 3. Being driven out by his brethren, his great soul would
not suffer him either to dig or beg, but by his sword he must live;
and, being soon noted for his bravery, those that were reduced to such
straits, and animated by such a spirit, enlisted themselves under him.
Vain men they are here called, that is, men that had run through their
estates and had to seek for a livelihood. These went out with him, not
to rob or plunder, but to hunt wild beasts, and perhaps to make
incursions upon those countries which Israel was entitled to, but had
not as yet come to the possession of, or were some way or other injured
by. This is the man that must save Israel. That people had by their
idolatry made themselves children of whoredoms, and aliens from God and
his covenant, and therefore, though God upon their repentance will
deliver them, yet, to mortify them and remind them of their sin, he
chooses to do it by a bastard and an exile.