What Did the Spirit Prompt (Judges 11)?
Judges 11 tells us that the Spirit of YHWH came upon Jephthah (11:29). In his commentary on Judges, Barry Webb says (rightly), that this statement “implies that Jephthah’s activity that immediately follows is a consequence of the Spirit coming upon him.”
But what is that activity? For Webb, it’s all the movement from place to place in v. 29: “And the Spirit of YHWH was upon Jephthah and he passed through Gilead and Manasseh and he passed through Mizpah of Gilead and from Mizpah of Gilead he passed through to the sons of Ammon.”
But notice that that string of ands continues, unbroken, into verse 30: “And Jephthah vowed a vow to YHWH, and he said….” and on into verse 32, “And Jephthah passed through to the sons of Ammon to fight against them….”
From the fact that verse 32 resumes what was said at the end of verse 29, Webb argues that Jephthah’s vow (vv. 30-31) is an “interruption to Jephthah’s progress from his endowment with the Spirit to his victory in battle.” Well, it’s certainly an interruption in the account of Jephthah’s movements. But it’s still part of the chain of “and this and that” that follows from the coming of the Spirit.
If the passing through this place and that place in verse 29 and the advancing to fight the Ammonites in verse 32 are “a consequence of the Spirit coming upon him,” then the vow sandwiched in between is too.