24. If Chemosh your god takes over a country and gives it to you, don't you have a right to it? And if the Lord takes over a country and gives it to us, the land is ours!
25. Are you better than Balak the son of Zippor? He was the king of Moab, but he didn't quarrel with Israel or start a war with us.
26. For three hundred years, Israelites have been living in Heshbon and Aroer and the nearby villages, and in the towns along the Arnon gorge. If the land really belonged to you Ammonites, you wouldn't have waited until now to try to get it back.
27. I haven't done anything to you, but it's certainly wrong of you to start a war. I pray that the Lord will show whether Israel or Ammon is in the right.
28. But the king of Ammon paid no attention to Jephthah's message.
29. Then the Lord's Spirit took control of Jephthah, and Jephthah went through Gilead and Manasseh, raising an army. Finally, he arrived at Mizpah in Gilead, where
30. he promised the Lord, “If you will let me defeat the Ammonites
31. and come home safely, I will sacrifice to you whoever comes out to meet me first.”
32. From Mizpah, Jephthah attacked the Ammonites, and the Lord helped him defeat them.
33. Jephthah and his army destroyed the twenty towns between Aroer and Minnith, and others as far as Abel-Keramim. After that, the Ammonites could not invade Israel any more.
34. When Jephthah returned to his home in Mizpah, the first one to meet him was his daughter. She was playing a tambourine and dancing to celebrate his victory, and she was his only child.
35. “Oh!” Jephthah cried. Then he tore his clothes in sorrow and said to his daughter, “I made a sacred promise to the Lord, and I must keep it. Your coming out to meet me has broken my heart.”
36. “Father,” she said, “you made a sacred promise to the Lord, and he let you defeat the Ammonites. Now, you must do what you promised, even if it means I must die.
37. But first, please let me spend two months, wandering in the hill country with my friends. We will cry together, because I can never get married and have children.”
38. “Yes, you may have two months,” Jephthah said.She and some other girls left, and for two months they wandered in the hill country, crying because she could never get married and have children.
39. Then she went back to her father. He did what he had promised, and she never got married.That's why
40. every year, Israelite girls walk around for four days, weeping for Jephthah's daughter.