11:1 Nahash the Ammonite. Descended from Lot, the Ammonites were a Semitic people (Gen. 19:38; Deut. 2:19) whose kingdom was on the east side of the Jordan, south of the Jabbok River. While Ammon was sometimes on friendly terms with Israel (2 Sam. 10:2), the Ammonites often exerted pressure on Israel’s eastern border (Judg. 3:13; 11:4–32), as the Philistines did on the west. According to the Dead Sea Scrolls and Josephus (Antiquities 6.5.1), the siege of Jabesh-gilead was part of a larger campaign by Nahash.

Jabesh-gilead. A principal city in what was probably the territory of Gad, Jabesh-gilead was east of the Jordan River, twenty-two miles south of the Sea of Chinnereth (Galilee).