The men of Ephraim were gathered together, and passed northward; and they said to Jephthah, Why did you pass over to fight against the children of Ammon, and didn't call us to go with you? we will burn your house on you with fire.
It is evident that the providence of God is visible in this humiliating defeat of Ephraim.  Their conceited arrogance was a problem that threatened all of Israel, and, if their demand to be recognized as head of the tribes of Israel had not been frustrated, the apostasy of all Israel might indeed have occurred much earlier than it did, because, even this early in their history, the tendency of Ephraim and their followers was consistently antagonistic toward Jehovah and increasingly oriented toward idolatry. Such unhappy developments in Ephraim had originated with their ancestor Joseph's marriage to the daughter of a pagan priest.  What a tragedy is evident in this paragraph that, instead of being happy and praising God for the victory Jehovah had given Jephthah over the enemies of Israel, these conceited, greedy Ephraimites came over, spoiling for a fight, no doubt expecting to be bought off by Jephthah's dividing the spoils of victory with them, in the same manner that Gideon had done on a similar occasion previously.