1. Judges 1:14 (ESV)
  2. Exposition

Whom did Achsah urge?

Judges 1:14 (ESV)

14 When she came to him, she urged him to ask her father for a field. And she dismounted from her donkey, and Caleb said to her, “What do you want?”

The ESV takes him to refer to Othniel; thus, Achsah urged Othniel to ask her father for a field. This interpretation follows traditional scholarly consensus. But it has its difficulties.

  1. In the original the referent of the object him is ambiguous; it could just as well apply to Caleb as to Othniel, in which case Achsah approaches her father herself, which seems to be confirmed by the following sentences.1

  2. In the Hebrew, Othniel drops out of the story after Judges 1:13. The remainder of Judges 1:14–15, involving only Achsah and her father, describe how this transpired.2

Thus it seems more likely that Achsah urges her father. What follows in the sentence can be translated as by asking her father for a field.