What Does Judges 11:2 Mean?
And Gilead's wife bore him sons, and when his wife's sons grew up, they drove Jephthah out, and said to him, You shall not take possession in our father's house, for you are the son of a foreign woman.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
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.THE KEY
The claim to inherit becomes the reason Jephthah is driven out of his own father’s house.
THE MEANING
This verse names a live pattern: when belonging is guarded as an inheritance, a household can deny someone both a share and a home. Calling Jephthah “the son of a strange woman”, בֶּן־אִשָּׁה אַחֶרֶת (ben ishah acheret), “son of another woman”, makes his mother’s different place in the household the stated reason for his expulsion.
THE ROOT
וַיְגָרְשׁוּ
vayegarshu
GROWS FROM
גרש
Drive out, expel, send away.
“drove Jephthah out” in this verse is vayegarshu. The root carries the act of sending someone away, and it also appears in the Hebrew word for a divorced woman, one sent away from a marriage. The same verb appears in Genesis 21:10, where a mother and her son are told to leave a household over an inheritance claim.
ALSO GROWS
legarēsh: To drive out, expel
לְגָרֵשׁ
This infinitive carries the same act of sending away found in Jephthah’s expulsion.
gerushah: A divorced woman; a woman sent away
גְּרוּשָׁה
The root extends expulsion into a severed marital bond, showing how sending away can end a person’s place in a household.
תִּנְחַל
tinḥal
GROWS FROM
נחל
Receive as a possession; inherit an allotted share.
The word points to an allotted possession, not merely an abstract entitlement. The brothers use the claim that Jephthah cannot inherit to deny him both a future share and his present place in their father’s house.
ALSO GROWS
naḥalah: Inheritance, possession, allotted portion
נַחֲלָה
This noun makes clear that the dispute concerns a share assigned within a family.
hinḥil: Cause to inherit; allot as a possession
הִנְחִיל
This related form shows inheritance as something apportioned to a person, the very place the brothers deny Jephthah.
THE PATTERN
When inheritance is treated as an exclusive claim, protecting the share can divide a household and push someone outside it.
So she said to Abraham, Drive out this servant woman and her son, for the son of this servant woman shall not take possession with my son, with Isaac.And the younger of them said to his father, "Father, give me the portion of the estate that falls upon me." And he divided his living between them.But those who work the soil said among themselves, This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the portion will be ours.THE THREAD
So she said to Abraham, Drive out this servant woman and her son, for the son of this servant woman shall not take possession with my son, with Isaac.“Cast out” comes from the same Hebrew root, גרש (garash), as “thrust out” in Judges. Both verses join an inheritance claim to the expulsion of a woman’s son, exposing the shared mechanism beneath the two scenes.
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