Researching all of these stories about women has been an eye-opener.  People do the craziest things.  I think that if I had done some of the things that I've uncovered in the Bible, I would be absolutely certain that it didn't get written down.  But since God is in control of what was written, we have some of the most interesting stories.  Some of them are about some stupid things that people did.

Like Jephthah.  He was a great warrior, but his mother was a prostitute.  His father Gilead had a number of sons who were legitimate--who called Jephthah a "Son of a whore" and chased him out of the country.  But when the Ammonites threatened to overrun Gilead,  those same sons begged Jephthah to come back and fight for them, and that they would make him king.

So he returned, went to war and attacked the army of Ammon.  He told God that if God would give him the victory, that when he returned home, whoever came to meet him first would be given to God as a sacrifice.  Stupid.  Stupid.  Stupid.  Human sacrifice was never acceptable to God.

After he won the war, he returned home and the first person to come to meet him was not what he expected.  His only child, a daughter ran to meet him playing on a tambourine and dancing for joy to see her father.  When he saw her he tore his clothes in anguish.  "Alas my daughter, for I have made a vow to the Lord and I cannot take it back."

His daughter told him, "You must do what you promised God, but first let me go to the hills for a vacation with my girlfriends for two months." She was weeping because she said, "I will never get to marry."  This is nuts.  God didn't want a human sacrifice, but Jephthah must have been very ignorant of the God he claimed to serve who had said, "Do not kill."  Other nations practiced human sacrifice at the time, but this was abhorrent to Jehovah.  Sometimes false "religion" takes the place of true worship.  Jephthah should have just asked God for the victory at war.  If you don't know what God wants from you, you may do something just as stupid.  Read the Bible to know the truth.

Jephthah sacrificed her.  All that we know of what happened afterward is that from that day on, it became a custom for young girls to make a retreat for four days each year to lament the fate of Jephthah's daughter.  (We don't know her name.)  I'm glad I didn't live back then.