Judges 11

Sugya Map: The Status of Yiftah

• Issue: Was Yiftah a mamzer (illicit progeny) or merely the son of a woman from a different tribe (an inter-tribal union), socially stigmatized by custom?
• Nafka Mina: Whether the elders' rejection of Yiftah was a halachic necessity or an act of tribal ol (injustice).
• Primary Sources: Judges 11:1, Radak ad loc., Tzaverei Shalal, Bava Batra 120a.

Text Snapshot

Judges 11:1: "ויפתח הגלעדי היה גבור חיל והוא בן אשה זונה" (Yiftah the Gileadite was a mighty warrior, and he was the son of a zonah).

• Leshon Nuance: The term zonah (harlot/prostitute) is contested. Radak and the Targumic tradition cited in Tzaverei Shalal re-read this not as sexual immorality, but as a socio-legal status: a woman who married outside her tribe, thereby forfeiting her standing in the ancestral estate.

Readings

• Radak (ad loc.): Argues that the brothers’ exclusion of Yiftah was an act of injustice. He cites the principle that a son of a pilegesh (concubine) is a legitimate heir for all matters, including inheritance. He views the term zonah as an epithet applied by society to inter-tribal marriages.
• Tzaverei Shalal: Refines this by clarifying that the "prostitute" label applied specifically to a bat yoreshet (an heiress) who married outside her tribe. He resolves the kushya (difficulty) regarding Samson—whose mother was from a different tribe—by noting that the restriction only applied to heiresses who would cause tribal land to transfer.

Friction

• Kushya: If the brothers were merely following a "custom" of tribal integrity, why does Judges 11:7 have Yiftah accuse them of rejecting him? If he is a legitimate son, their exclusion is a moral failing, not a legal one.
• Terutz: The brothers utilized the social stigma of his mother’s "foreign" status to strip him of his rightful share, masking tribal greed with a veneer of "piety" regarding inheritance laws.

Intertext & Psak

• Cross-Ref: Bava Batra 120a establishes that a man's son is his son for all purposes, except for those born of a slave or non-Jew. Radak uses this to validate Yiftah's claim.
• Practice: This serves as a meta-halachic warning against using communal stigmas to bypass clear inheritance rights. Halacha protects the status of the "illegitimate" son in inheritance, even if the "sons of the wife" attempt to redefine his status through social ostracization.

Takeaway

Labeling others as "outsiders" is often a performative mask for protecting one's own assets. Yiftah’s history teaches that legitimate claims to inheritance cannot be erased by the weaponization of social labels.