Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Judges 11:37
And she said unto her father, Let this thing be done for me: let me alone two months, that I may go up and down upon the mountains, and bewail my virginity, I and my fellows.
37. and go down upon the mountains ] A slight emendation ( weradhti for weyaradhti) improves the sense: and roam or wander restlessly; cf. Jer 2:31 (‘we roam at large’).
bewail my virginity ] To be neither wife nor mother was considered a punishment and a reproach: cf. Gen 16:1-5; Gen 30:23, 1Sa 1:10-11; 1Sa 1:15, Isa 4:1, Luk 1:25. The ancient Greeks felt similarly 1 [45] .
[45] See Livingstone, The Greek Genius (1912), p. 83 f.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Bewail my virginity – To become a wife and a mother was the end of existence to an Israelite maiden. The premature death of Jephthahs daughter was about to frustrate this end.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Verse 37. I and my fellows] Whether she meant the young women of her own acquaintance, or those who had been consecrated to God in the same way, though on different accounts, is not quite clear; but it is likely she means her own companions: and her going up and down upon the mountains may signify no more than her paying each of them a visit at their own houses, previously to her being shut up at the tabernacle; and this visiting of each at their own home might require the space of two months. This I am inclined to think is the meaning of this difficult clause.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
She chose
the mountains as a solitary place, and therefore fittest both for lamentations, and for her preparation for her approaching calamity.
Bewail my virginity; that I shall die childless, which was esteemed both a curse and a disgrace for the Israelites, Gen 30:23; 1Sa 1:6 7; Isa 4:1, because such were excluded from that great privilege of increasing the holy seed, and contributing to the birth of the Messiah, who was to be born of an Israelitish woman.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
And she said unto her father, let this thing be done for me,…. She had but one favour to ask of him, which she thought might be granted, without any breach of the vow:
let me alone two months she desired such a space of time might be allowed her before the vow took place; and the rather she might be encouraged to expect that her request would be granted, since no time was fixed by the vow for the accomplishment of it, and since the time she asked was not very long, and the end to be answered not unreasonable
that I may go up and down upon the mountains; or, “ascend upon the mountains” h; Jepthah’s house in Mizpeh being higher than the mountains; or there might be, as Kimchi and Ben Melech note, a valley between that and the mountains, to which she descended in order to go up to the mountains; see Jud 9:25 these she chose to make her abode, and take her walks in, during the time she asked, as being most fit for retirement and solitude; where she might give up herself to meditation and prayer, and conversation with her fellow virgins she would take with her, and so be wrought up to a greater degree of resignation and submission to her father’s will, and to the will of God in it, as she might suppose:
and bewail my virginity, I and my fellows; the virgins her companions; this she proposed to be the subject that she and her associates would dwell upon, during this time of solitude; and the rather, as this may be thought to be the thing contained in the vow, that as she was a virgin, so she should continue; by which means she would not be the happy instrument of increasing the number of the children of Israel, nor of being the progenitor of the Messiah; upon which accounts it was reckoned in those times to be very grievous and reproachful to live and die without issue, and so matter of lamentation and weeping.
h “et descendam super montes”, Pagninus, Montanus; “descendamque ad montes”, Tigurine version.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
(37) Let me alone two months.There was nothing which forbade this postponement for a definite purpose and period of the fulfilment of the vow. For the phrase let me alone, see Deu. 9:14; 1Sa. 11:3.
And bewail my virginity.The thought which was so grievous to the Hebrew maiden was not death, but to die unwedded and childless. This is the bitterest wail of Antigone also, in the great play of Sophocles (Ant. 890); but to a Hebrew maid the pang would be more bitter, because the absence of motherhood cut off from her, and, in this instance, from her house, the hopes which prophecy had cherished. Josephus makes the expression mean no more than to bewail her youth, neoteta (Jos. Antt. v. 7, 10).
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
37. Bewail my virginity Mark, not to bewail her death, for that, by itself considered, might be regarded as a glorious end. Die she must, sooner or later, and no more honourable death could ever be her lot. But she would bewail that which gave her death its only woful pang, and was to her far worse than death itself; a thing above all others deplorable in the estimation of that age and race the fact that, in the flower of youthful womanhood, she must close life without a husband and without a child, leaving no heir to her father’s house. It is difficult for us, with our loose attachments to the coming ages, and familiar with the modern prevalent lack of interest in posterity, and the noticeable desire among multitudes of females to remain childless, to appreciate the depth of feeling on this subject among the Hebrew women. A husbandless and childless state was a reproach to any marriageable female. Keil makes a misleading assertion when he says, “To mourn one’s virginity does not mean to mourn because one has to die a virgin, but because one has to live and remain a virgin.” More truly should it be said, that the expression has as much respect to the past as to the future, but contemplates not specially life or death, but the fact of virginity. Could Jephthah’s daughter only have perpetuated her father’s house and name; could it only have been that sons and daughters survived her, to take away her reproach among women, there would have been no pang in her death.
But why, some ask, if she was doomed to death, did she not rather spend those two months at home, and enjoy all the comfort she could during the short respite of her life? To one thus appointed to death, we answer, home affords no soul comforts, and earth’s festal scenes and sociality no pleasure. It is not human, under such circumstances, to find entertainment in the common joys of home. Far more congenial to the feelings of the dying maiden would be the mountain solitudes than any thing her father’s house could furnish. Then, also, the two months were asked, not for one more round of pleasures, but for mourning her virginity; and for that purpose the solitudes of the mountains, not the peopled town, with the presence of men, were appropriate.
But if, on the other hand, she knew she was to live and remain a virgin, and be shut up in seclusion for the rest of life, what sense or object in taking those two months to mourn? And in what sense would she be more really consecrated to celibacy after than during the two months of sorrow? Much more natural, as we conceive, would it have been for her, in that case, to have said: Let me stay at home, and enjoy the scenes of common life yet a month or two, since I must give all after-life to tears and solitude.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
‘ And she said to her father, “Let this thing be done for me, let me alone two months that I may depart and go down on the mountains and bewail my virginity, I and my companions.’
From now on she was to be a perpetual virgin. Like Samuel after her she was sanctified to Yahweh by her parent’s oath ‘all the days of her life’ (1Sa 1:11). To a woman of Israel childbearing was everything. Yet for her this was to be denied. What she asked was that she might have two months to prepare herself for her new vocation and to get herself used to her new calling, to bewail the fact that she would never be a mother. And she went with her companions as though she were preparing for her wedding.
And in this preparation she went into the mountains. She knew that this was where Abraham had gone to ‘sanctify’ his son (Genesis 22). She knew that this was where Moses had gone to meet and commune with Yahweh. Thus she herself would go into the mountains to make her peace with Yahweh, for there was nowhere else that she could go. But it would not have been seemly, or wise, for her to go alone. ‘Go down on the mountains’ may indicate her desire to abase herself before God.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Jdg 11:37 And she said unto her father, Let this thing be done for me: let me alone two months, that I may go up and down upon the mountains, and bewail my virginity, I and my fellows.
Ver. 37. And bewail my virginity. ] She saith, not the loss of my life, but the want of posterity; which in those days was counted a great curse.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
go up and down = wander about.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
go up and down: Heb. go and go down
bewail: 1Sa 1:6, Luk 1:25
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Jdg 11:37. That I may go up and down upon the mountains Which she chose as a solitary place, and therefore fittest for lamentation. Bewail That I shall die childless, which was esteemed both a curse and a disgrace for the Israelites, because such were excluded from that great privilege of increasing the holy seed, and contributing to the birth of the Messiah.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
11:37 And she said unto her father, Let this thing be done for me: let me alone two months, that I may go up and down upon the mountains, and {p} bewail my virginity, I and my fellows.
(p) For it was counted as a shame in Israel, to die without children, and therefore they rejoiced to be married.