Continued from yesterday. [Jephthah had sent a message to the king of Ammon:] "But now after three hundred years you make an issue of this! Israel has been living here for all that time, spread across the land from Heshbon to Aroer, and all along the Arnon River. Why have you made no effort to recover it before now? No, I have not sinned against you; rather, you have wronged me by coming to war against me; but Jehovah the Judge will soon show which of us is right - Israel or Ammon."

   But the king paid no attention to Jephthah's message. At that time the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah and he led his army across the land of Gilead and Manasseh, past Mizpah in Gilead, and attacked the army of Ammon. Meanwhile Jephthah had vowed to the Lord that if God would help Israel conquer the Ammonites, then when he returned home in peace, the first person coming out of his house to meet him would be sacrificed as a burnt offering to the Lord!

   So Jephthah led his army against the Ammonites, and the Lord gave him the victory. He destroyed the Ammonites with a terrible slaughter all the way from Aroer to Minnith, including twenty cities, and as far away as Vineyard Meadow. Thus the Ammonites were subdued by the people of Israel.

   When Jephthah returned home his daughter - his only child - ran out to meet him, playing on a tambourine and dancing for joy. When he saw her he tore his clothes in anguish. "Alas, my daughter!" he cried out. "You have brought me to the dust. For I have made a vow to the Lord and I cannot take it back." And she said, "Father, you must do whatever you promised the Lord, for He has given you a great victory over your enemies, the Ammonites. But first let me go up into the hills and roam with my girl friends for two months, weeping because I'll never marry."

   "Yes," he said. "Go."

   And so she did, bewailing her fate with her friends for two months. Then she returned to her father, who did as he had vowed. So she was never married. And after that it became a custom in Israel, that the young girls went away for four days each year to lament the fate of Jephthah's daughter.

Taken from Judges 11, The Living Bible. For free Lifescope book,
write to Box 1575, Carlsbad, NM 88221. Please send $1.00 for postage and handling.