19. “Then Israel sent messengers to Sihon king of the Amorites, who ruled in Heshbon. Israel said to him, “Please let us pass through your land to our home.”
20. Yet Sihon did not trust Israel to pass through his territory, so Sihon gathered all his people and set up camp in Jahaz to fight with Israel.
21. “The Lord God of Israel gave Sihon and all his people into the hands of Israel, and they struck them down. So Israel took possession of all the land of the Amorites who lived in that land.
22. They took possession of all of the territory of the Amorites, from the Arnon to the Jabbok and from the desert to the Jordan.
23. “Now that the Lord God of Israel has driven out the Amorites from before His people Israel, should you take it?
24. Will you not take possession of whatever Chemosh your god gives you? So everything that the Lord our God possesses before us, we will take possession of it.
25. Now are you really better than Balak son of Zippor, the king of Moab? Did he ever contend with Israel or wage war with them?
26. Israel has lived in Heshbon and its nearby towns, in Aroer and its nearby towns, and in all the cities along the banks of the River Arnon for three hundred years. Why did you not take them back during that time?
27. So I have not sinned against you, but it is you who are doing evil to me by waging war against me. May the Lord, the Judge, judge today between the children of Israel and the Ammonites.”
28. Yet the Ammonite king would not listen to the message that Jephthah had sent him.
29. Then 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.
30. Jephthah made a vow to the Lord, “If You will indeed give the Ammonites into my hands,
31. then 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.”
32. So Jephthah crossed over to the Ammonites to wage war against them, and the Lord gave them into his hands.
33. He 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 children of Israel.
34. When Jephthah went to his house at Mizpah, there was his daughter coming out to meet him, dancing with a tambourine. She was his only child. Other than her, he had neither son nor daughter.
35. When 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.”
36. She 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.”