Judges 11:23
“So now Yahweh, the God of Israel, has dispossessed the Amorites from before his people Israel, and should you possess them?”
What does Judges 11:23 mean?
Jephthah is making a legal argument to the king of Ammon, pointing out that Israel conquered the Amorite lands generations earlier, and those lands now rightfully belong to God's people. He's essentially saying: "Your claim to this territory doesn't hold up, because God already gave it to us." This comes from a real historical dispute about who owned the land east of the Jordan River, and Jephthah is appealing to both conquest and divine right as his evidence. The question at the end is rhetorical, meant to show how unreasonable it would be for Ammon to demand land that Israel has legitimately possessed for centuries.