¹Now Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty man of valor, but he was the son of a prostitute. Gilead was the father of Jephthah.[#Heb 11:32; #Jdg 6:12; #Hos 1:2]

²Gilead’s wife also bore him sons. His wife’s sons grew up and drove Jephthah away. They said to him, “You will not inherit anything from our father’s house because you are the son of another woman.”

³So Jephthah fled from his brothers and lived in the land of Tob. Men of ill repute gathered around Jephthah and went out with him.[#Jdg 9:4]

⁴Some time passed, then the Ammonites waged war with Israel.

⁵When the Ammonites waged war with Israel, the elders of Gilead went to bring Jephthah back from the land of Tob.

⁶They said to Jephthah, “Come and be our leader so that we may fight the Ammonites.”

⁷Jephthah said to the elders of Gilead, “Did you not hate me and drive me out of my father’s house? Why have you come to me now that you are in trouble?”[#Ge 26:27]

⁸The elders of Gilead said to Jephthah, “Even so, we have turned to you. Come with us and fight the Ammonites. You will be ruler over all the inhabitants of Gilead.”[#Jdg 10:18]

⁹Jephthah said to the elders of Gilead, “If you bring me back to wage war against the Ammonites, and the Lord gives them to me, then I will be your ruler.”

¹⁰The elders of Gilead said to Jephthah, “May the Lord be a witness between us if we do not act according to your word.”[#Ge 31:50; Jer 42:5]

¹¹So Jephthah went with the elders of Gilead. The people set him over them as ruler and leader. And Jephthah spoke all his words before the Lord in Mizpah.[#Jdg 10:17; 20:1]

¹²Jephthah sent messengers to the Ammonite king to say, “What problem is there between you and me, that you have come to me to wage war in my land?”

¹³The Ammonite king said to the messengers of Jephthah, “Because when Israel came up from Egypt, they took my land, from the Arnon to the Jabbok and as far as the Jordan. Now return it peacefully.”[#Ge 32:22; Nu 21:24–26]

¹⁴Again Jephthah sent messengers to the Ammonite king,

¹⁵and said to him,

²⁸Yet the Ammonite king would not listen to the message that Jephthah had sent him.

²⁹Then the Spirit of the Lord came on Jephthah and he passed through Gilead and Manasseh, and passed through Mizpah of Gilead, and went on to the Ammonites.[#Nu 11:25; Jdg 3:10]

³⁰Jephthah made a vow to the Lord , “If You will indeed give the Ammonites into my hands,[#Ge 28:20; 1Sa 1:11]

³¹then whatever comes out from the door of my house to meet me, when I return safely from the Ammonites, will surely be the Lord ’s, and I will offer it up as a burnt offering.”[#1Sa 1:28]

³²So Jephthah crossed over to the Ammonites to wage war against them, and the Lord gave them into his hands.

³³He struck them down from Aroer to Minnith, twenty cities, and as far as Abel Keramim. The defeat was very severe, and the Ammonites were humbled before the Israelites.[#Eze 27:17]

³⁴Then Jephthah came to his house at Mizpah. And behold, his daughter came out to meet him, dancing with a tambourine. She was his only child. Other than her, he had neither son nor daughter.[#Ex 15:20; Jer 31:4]

³⁵When he saw her, he ripped up his clothes and said, “Alas, my daughter! You have brought utter disaster to me. You are my undoing, for I have given my word to the Lord , and I cannot take it back.”

³⁶She said to him, “My father, you have opened your mouth to the Lord . Do to me what has come out of your mouth, because the Lord worked vengeance upon your enemies, the Ammonites.”[#2Sa 18:19]

³⁷Then she said to her father, “Let this be done for me: Give me two months, and I and my friends will wander the hill country and mourn over my virginity.”

³⁸He said, “Go,” and he sent her away for two months. She and her friends went and mourned over her virginity in the hill country.

³⁹At the end of two months she returned to her father, and he did to her according to the vow that he had made. She had not ever slept with a man.

So it became a custom in Israel

⁴⁰that the women of Israel would commemorate the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite for four days each year.