‘ And Jephthah said to them, “I and my people were at a great strife with the children of Ammon, and when I called you, you did not save me out of their hands.”
Jephthah had no thought of submitting. He merely pointed out the great trouble that Gilead, Gad and Reuben had been in and that Ephraim, when called on along with others, had not been willing to do anything about it. ‘Did not save me.' Here he was speaking of his people as now represented by himself. The call to the tribal confederacy for help, which had gone unheeded, was probably made by the elders of Gilead long before his appointment. But it had shown them that they would get no help from that quarter.