It happened after a while, that the children of Ammon made war against Israel.
Jephthah made it a condition of his helping them that he would be the ruler of the Gileadites after the military campaign was over.  It is a measure of the Gileadites' distress that they readily consented to do this, making a solemn covenant with Jephthah to that effect "before Jehovah" in Mizpah.  Strahan may have been correct when he wrote that, "Jephthah did not think that the word of the elders was as good as their bond; and he would not budge an inch without their adjuration, `Yahweh be witness between us.'"[8]  Some have appeared to be a little critical of Jephthah for making, "his own aggrandizement the condition of delivering his country,"[9] but the sad circumstances of his birth, the enmity of his brothers, and his being excluded from his country were not at all favorable for the development in Jephthah of any other attitude than that which he manifested here.  We feel a great admiration of him, because, in spite of the unwholesome environment in which he was forced to live, his name nevertheless appears in the roster of God's faithful servants  (Hebrews 11:31).