1. Judges 11:26 (ESV)
  2. Exposition

What does Jephthah’s question amount to?

Judges 11:26 (ESV)

26 While Israel lived in Heshbon and its villages, and in Aroer and its villages, and in all the cities that are on the banks of the Arnon, 300 years, why did you not deliver them within that time?

Jephthah makes an argument from silence. He chides the Ammonite: “Israel has been in this land for three hundred years. And the Ammonites have never previously attempted to claim the land in dispute. If this is your land as you say, why has nobody else in the last three hundred years raised a fuss about it?”