<P> The victorious Jephthah is met on his return by his only child, a daughter . Jephthah tears his clothes and cries, "Alas, my daughter! You have brought me very low!" but is bound by his vow: "I have opened my mouth to the Lord, and I cannot take back my vow". The girl asks for two months' grace, "...that I may go up and down on the mountains and weep for my virginity". And so Jephthah "did with her according to his vow that he had made". The story ends by recounting how "the daughters of Israel went year by year to lament the daughter of Jephthah, the Gileadite, four days in the year". </P> <P> Later, Jephthah was forced to fight against the Ephraimites, who refused to aid him in his struggle against the Ammonites . The story is remembered for the killing of the fugitive Ephraimites who were identified by their accent; they said the Hebrew word shibboleth as sibboleth . "At that time 42,000 of the Ephraimites fell" (Judges 12: 5--6). </P> <P> Jephthah's sacrifice of his daughter stands in stark contrast to the Binding of Isaac in the Book of Genesis, in which Abraham was about to perform a divinely - ordered sacrifice of his son, when an angel of God directly intervened and stopped the sacrifice . There was no intervention in the case of Jephthah's daughter who was, contrary to Mosaic law, given as a burnt offering . Unlike other instances of burnt offerings that were in fact in line with Mosaic law, there is no divine acknowledgement of this offering . </P> <P> Some writers have observed that the Israelites of the time were decidedly barbarous; that Mosaic law (which forbade human sacrifice) was at this time widely disrespected; and that there are several other examples of rash vows to God with similarly terrible consequences . Of course, the barbarism of the Israelites says nothing about why the God of the Bible would accept a child sacrifice . David Janzen argued that the story was an integral part of the Deuteronomist picture of moral decline through adoption of non-Israelitic practices such as child sacrifice . Solomon Landers believed that the absence of express judgement implies that the sacrifice was not acceptable to God, notwithstanding the fact that the sacrifice nevertheless happened . The Book of Judges has been seen as teaching a cycle of pride associated with rejection of God's law and subsequent suffering of the people . </P>

Who made a vow to god in the bible