This chapter narrates a bloody civil war. Yiftach doesn't manage to defuse a personal affront in the elegant manner exercised by Gidon before him. Ethnic tension and a bruised ego lead to an inversion of one of the paradigms of the book of Shoftim, as the crossing points over the Jordan River are used not to save the Israelites, but to have brother trap and execute brother.
Yiftach has many virtues but in the final analysis, he is remembered as a Shofet who murdered not only his daughter but 42,000 Israelites.
