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.
Thou shalt not inherit in our father's home. Since there were children by the legitimate wife, the son of the secondary one was not entitled to any share of the patrimony, and the prior claim of the others was indisputable. Hence, as the brothers of Jephthah seem to have resorted to rude and violent treatment, they must have been influenced by some secret ill-will. 'I conceive,' says Lord Arthur Hervey ('Genealogies,' p.
244), 'that Jephthah was the son of this Aramitess, born to Gilead in his old age in the wilderness, and possibly about 17 years old at the time of the entrance into Canaan. When he laid claim to a share of the land of Gilead, on the return of his brethren from the wars of Canaan, some 20 years later (he having remained in Gilead with the women and children under age to go to war), his brethren reproached him with his base and foreign birth, and expelled him from their land. Or, more probably, the younger Gileadites, who had remained behind with him when the men of war went over, Jordan with Joshua, when they grew up to man's estate, drove him away.'