[1] Jephthah led the Israelites in battle against Ammon and, in exchange for defeating the Ammonites, made a vow to sacrifice whatever would come out of the door of his house first.

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.

Some writers have observed that the Israelites of the time widely disrespected Mosaic law, which forbade human sacrifice; and that there are several other examples of rash vows, some with similarly terrible consequences (for instance 2 Samuel 21:6–9).

[9] 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.

Her character is elaborated and emphasized;[12][13] "the author has done his utmost to put this woman on the same level as the patriarchs, in this case especially Isaac.

"[14] John Chrysostom held that God allowed Jephthah to kill his daughter in order to prevent similar rash vows being made in the future and that it was for that purpose that the annual bewailing of the event took place as a constant reminder.

[16]One midrash characterizes Yiftach (Jephthah) as a person of poor judgment, who makes "unfitting" vows without proper consideration for consequences (B'reishit Rabbah, 60:3).

Since at least the 12th or 13th century, Jewish scholars, among them the compiler and summarizer David Kimhi (1160–1235) and Levi Ben Gershon (1288–1344), have taken fulfilment of Jephthah's vow as meaning that he only kept her in seclusion.

[20] This view is put forward also by Christian scholars from the 14th century[21] and continues to be propounded today, as by Solomon Landers, who considers it most likely that the fate of Jephthah's daughter was perpetual virginity or solitary confinement.

Such offerings were common to heathen nations at that time, but it is noteworthy that Israel stands out among them with this great peculiarity, that human sacrifices were unknown in Israel.However, in the Hebrew Bible, the same word for 'burnt offering' (Hebrew, ʿōlāh) used in reference to Jephthah and his daughter in Judges 11:31 is also used in other Biblical stories alluding to human sacrifice, such as the story of Abraham and Isaac (Genesis 22) and Mesha of Moab and his son (2 Kings 3:27).

Adam Clarke's Commentary has an exposition of the issues at stake in this passage and contends that the vow Jephthah made was not as rash as it sounds.

[28] Israel Finkelstein has suggested that behind multiple and large-scale Deuteronomistic and post-Deuteronomistic additions and redactions, there may lie an oral story which reflects a conflict on the boundary between Israelite and Ammonite settlements in Transjordan, around the towns of Gilead and Mizpah.

It may have been first written down in the 8th century BCE, when the Northern kingdom of Israel (Samaria) began to collect its heroic tales, royal stories, and foundation myths.

[30] Some observers have noted the similarities between Jephthah and the mythical Cretan general, Idomeneus,[31] as related by Servius the Grammarian in his Commentary on the Aeneid of Vergil.