25 Or are you, perhaps, better than Balak, the son of Zippor, the king of Moab? Or are you able to explain what his argument was against Israel, and why he fought against him?
26 And though he has lived in Heshbon, and its villages, and in Aroer, and its villages, and in all the cities near the Jordan for three hundred years, why have you, for such long a time, put forward nothing about this claim?
27 Therefore, I am not sinning against you, but you are doing evil against me, by declaring an unjust war against me. May the Lord be the Judge and the Arbiter this day, between Israel and the sons of Ammon."
28 But the king of the sons of Ammon was not willing to agree to the words of Jephthah that he commissioned by the messengers.
29 Therefore, the Spirit of the Lord rested upon Jephthah, and circling around Gilead, and Manasseh, and also Mizpah of Gilead, and crossing from there to the sons of Ammon,
30 he made a vow to the Lord, saying, "If you will deliver the sons of Ammon into my hands,
31 whoever will be the first to depart from the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the sons of Ammon, the same will I offer as a holocaust to the Lord."