14 ISRAel FINkelSTeIN towns, but during the events described the Ammonites have taken con- trol of Gilead. The elders of Gilead convene at Mizpah — probably the location of a regional shrine. Jephthah, who was born in the town of Gilead, is a leader of an Apiru gang; he lives in the (Aramean?) town of Tob in the steppe, 65 km northeast of Gilead (this is the gen- eral location of the “land of kedem” of the Jacob story — Gen 29,1). The elders of Gilead bring Jephthah back from Tob to lead them against the Ammonites. This means that the tale deals with a conflict between Israelites and Ammonites along the western Ammonite border. The background is somewhat similar to the story of the conclusion of the treaty between Jacob and laban — also related to Mizpah — which puts the border between them in the pasture areas in the north- eastern sector of the Israelite Gilead (Gen 31,45-54). The account of the heap of stones (galed = cairn) built by Jacob is probably etiologi- cal, intended to explain a geographical feature in the Gilead, which was in one way or the other connected to the reality of the border be- tween the Israelite and Aramean populations that lived in proximity in northern Transjordan, slightly to the north of the area dealt with in the Jephthah story 51. This story belongs to the early layer in the Jacob cycle, which was probably put in writing in the first half of the 8th cen- tury Bce, but which depicts earlier realities, when the settlement boundaries between Israelites and Arameans in this region were formed. This seems to best fit the late Iron I or early Iron IIA, that is, the late 11th or 10th centuries Bce — just before or in the early days of the Northern kingdom. Note the clash over Ramoth-gilead in the end-days of the Omrides (1 kings 22; 2 kgs 8,28-29) and that in the time of Jeroboam II lidbir, located slightly north of Mizpah 52, was considered a well-established Aramean city (Amos 6,11-14); these clues indeed seem to show that the ethnic border in the Gilead had been stabilized before the 9th century Bce 53. The original Jephthah story appears to portray a similar reality. The Apiru characteristics point to a time before the consolidation of the territorial kingdoms of Israel and Ammon, or in their very early days, that is, no later than the 10th century Bce. And similar to the 51 In fact, Mizpah was the closest town to the area where Israelite, Aramean and Ammonite populations met. 52 FINkelSTeIN – kOch – lIPSchITS, “The Biblical Gilead”. 53 On all this see I. FINkelSTeIN, The Forgotten Kingdom. The Archaeology and history of Northern Israel (Atlanta, GA 2013); FINkelSTeIN – RöMeR, “com- ments on the historical Background”.