Israel Finkelstein, «The Old Jephthah Tale in Judges: Geographical and Historical Considerations.», Vol. 97 (2016) 1-15
In this article I intend to reveal the old, orally-transmitted heroic tale that lies behind the Jephthah story in the Book of Judges, which is obscured by massive Deuteronomistic and post-Deuteronomistic additions and redactions. The old story deals with a conflict on the settlement boundary between Israelites and Ammonites in Transjordan, around the towns of Gilead and Mizpah. It probably reflects realities before, or in the early days of the Northern kingdom.
The OlD JePhThAh TAle IN JuDGeS 13
the Thutmose III list, seemingly together with towns in the Bashan,
including Ashtaroth 48. A city-state named Tubu is mentioned in the
Amarna tablets; eA 205, sent by the ruler of this place, belongs to the
Bashan correspondence 49.
It is not clear whether Toubion of 1 Macc 5,13 refers to a town or
a group (the Tobiads; see also 2 Macc 12,17). The context of the story
— a march of three days in the desert and the mention of Bozrah and
Qarnaim (1 Macc 5,24-26) — seems to point to the steppe area east of
the Sea of Galilee.
combining these references, the land of Tob should be sought in
Transjordan to the north of Ammon. The usage of “land”, typical of
Transjordan in the Bible, in the Mesha Inscription and in the 1 Mac-
cabees story, probably indicates that Tob was a town on the desert
fringe, which fits the ambiance in Judges 11 — Jephthah is a fugitive,
active with a gang of “worthless” men in an unruly area. The broadly
accepted identification is with the village of et-Taiyibeh in the area
of the upper Yarmuk River (G.R. 266 218), between Der‘a and Busra
esh-Sham (Bozrah) 50.
IV. The Geographical and historical Setting
Though the old Jephthah tale is short and possibly fragmentary,
the logic of its geographical setting is relatively easy to decipher. The
drama takes place between the town of Gilead, located south of the
Jabbok River and the town of Mizpah, situated 20 km to the northeast,
on the other side of the Jabbok Valley. Both are considered Israelite
Beth-shean Valley and that a later redactor confused the original meaning accord-
ing to the reality of his time, see I. FINkelSTeIN, “Does Rehob of the Beth-shean
Valley Appear in the Bible?”, BN (in press).
48
e.g., Y. AhARONI, The Land of the Bible. A historical Geography (Philadel-
phia, PA 1979) 159-160; S. AhITuV, Canaanite Toponyms in Ancient Egyptian
Documents (Jerusalem 1984) 190-191.
49
Y. GOReN – I. FINkelSTeIN – N. NA’AMAN, Inscribed in Clay. Provenance
Study of the Amarna letters and other Ancient Near eastern Texts (Monograph
Series of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv university 23; Tel Aviv 2004)
223-225; see W. MORAN, The Amarna Letters (Baltimore, MD 1992) 273, n. 2.
50
Summary in Z. kAllAI, “Tob, land of Tob”, Encyclopaedia Biblica 3 (1965)
366-367 (in hebrew); P.l. ReDDITT, “Tob”, ABD 6 (1992) 583; for a Middle
Bronze tomb there, see A. ABu ASSAF, “ein mittelbronzezeitliches Grab in at-Taiy-
bih und die Gleichsetzung von at-Taiybih mit Tu-b-ja”, Baghdader Mitteilungen
7 (1974) 13-19; for Iron Age pottery at the site see F. BRAeMeR, “Prospections
archéologiques dans le Ḥawrān (Syrie)”, Syria 61 (1984) 219-250.