Jephthah appears in the Book of Judges as a judge who presided over Israel for a period of six years. According to Judges, he lived in Gilead. His father's name is also given as Gilead, and, as his mother is described as a prostitute, this may indicate that his father might have been any of the men of that area. 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. When his daughter was the first to come out of the house, he immediately regretted the vow, which bound him to sacrifice his daughter to God. Jephthah carried out his vow.
Jephthah, depicted here in Promptuarii Iconum Insigniorum of Guillaume Rouillé
The Return of Jephtha, by Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini
The Daughter of Jephthah, by Alexandre Cabanel (1879).
The Book of Judges is the seventh book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. In the narrative of the Hebrew Bible, it covers the time between the conquest described in the Book of Joshua and the establishment of a kingdom in the Books of Samuel, during which Biblical judges served as temporary leaders.
Samson
"Gideon thanks God for the miracle of the dew", painting by Maarten van Heemskerck (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg)
An illustrated page from the Book of Judges in a German Bible, dated 1485 (Bodleian Library)