What does Judges 11:16 mean?

Jephthah has sent envoys to the king of Ammon with a long message. He is answering the king's charge that Israel stole the land of Gilead from the Ammonites after they first came out of Egypt (Judges 11:12–14). Jephthah's message has declared that this did not happen (Judges 11:15). Now he begins to give several arguments to support this perspective.

First, Jephthah recounts how, near the end of the forty years of wandering in the wilderness, the Israelites came up from the direction of Egypt through the wilderness. They moved toward the Red Sea and eventually arrived at Kadesh, also known as Kadesh-barnea. Kadesh was south and west of the Dead Sea. Moses' sister Miriam died while they were at Kadesh and Moses struck the rock to get water instead of speaking to it, as the Lord told him to do (Numbers 20:1–13).

Jephthah will go on to describe how careful Israel was not even to cut across the lands of the Edomites and Moabites since they did not have permission to do so (Judges 11:17).