And Jephthah sent messengers again unto the king of the children of Ammon:
Jephthah sent messengers again unto the king of the children of Ammon. Jephthah's reply was clear, decided, and uuanswerable-first, those lands were not in the possession of the Ammonites when his countrymen got them, and that they had been acquired by right of conquest from the Amorites; secondly, that the Israelites had now, by a lapse of 300 years of undisputed possession, established a prescriptive right to the occupation; thirdly, having received a grant of them from the Lord, His people were entitled to maintain their right on the same principle that guided the Ammonites in receiving from their god Chemosh (cf. Numbers 21:29, where he is stated to be the tutelary deity of Moab also) the territory they now occupied; and, fourthly, that no attempt had been made, even by Balak, to dispossess the Israelites of Heshbon, Aroer, etc., all the time they occupied those places. The Israelite camp was pitched north of the Arnon, and the main body remained there while the fighting men were engaged in the conquest of Bashan. Afterward the camp was removed to Abel-shittim, in the Jordan valley; but a considerable portion of the Israelites seem to have remained on the eastern uplands, and to have inhabited the towns to the very brink of the Arnon ravine (cf. Numbers 21:24).