Jephthah’s story is both triumph and tragedy. The author of Judges recounts Jephthah’s life in such a way that his “victory is swallowed up in death.” But Jephthah’s story is just prologue to the best story. His life illustrates the inability of all other saviors to deliver us from our worst enemy. 

He prepares us for another judge who will rise to deliver his people. Like Jephthah, this judge will be despised and rejected by his brothers. His own people will drive him away. He too will die alone with no posterity, and sin and death will appear to continue their tyrannous reign on earth. 

But Jesus is not Jephthah! Death is not the final word for the one who kept himself “unspotted from the world.” In Jesus, “death is swallowed up in victory”! His resurrection from the dead is God’s victory over the enemies of sin, death, and the devil. So now this victory, and not death, has become the final world for the people of God—including Jephthah—who were once enslaved to sin and held captive by the grave.