Jephthah's Vow -Judges 11

Jephathah made a vow to God, and as a result he had to sacrifice his only daughter as a burning sacrifice. On the other hand, I was wondering, if Jephthah didn't make that vow, would he still succeed? In chapter 12, he slew down 42,000 of Ephraim. If we make a movie out of his life, and picture it vividly, that's quite a horror scene, wouldn't it?Put a modern church in that time, I think everyone would be flat out running programms of mercy, compassion, orphanage,rehab, conselling,etc. Or, put a scene like that in our current society, are we just too busy jump into the humanity side of mercy work and forget that God is actually behind the scene and He has something to tell us?When Jephthah made the vow, didn't God know what He want? Jephthah might not know what he was talking about, but was it just an accident that his daughter come out to meet him? I doubt it. There were thousands of other people that He could choose, but to make the sacrifice acceptable and worthy, I think He had the person in mind who He wanted to be sacrificed. And just for this reason, Jephthah knew that God had made the choice, not himself, not by chance, that Jephthah couldn't get out of the vow.Luke 16:8-9 has always been my favourite verse concerning giving:"And his master praised the unrighteous manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the sons of this age are more shrewd in relation to their own kind than the sons of light.And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by means of the wealth of unrighteousness, so that when it fails, they will receive you into the eternal dwellings."In other words, all the money we make, things we treasure, when we die, we can't take any of them with us. They belong to this world. But if we're shrewd, we can actually find ways to take them away with us, to store them or invest them into a place that will last eternally. For the moment it looks gone, but when you have the mindset of an invester, you know you've spent and kept your treasure in the best place that will bring you the maximum return.Maybe for that reason God always want the best of us as the sacrifice, not the leftovers. Because when we die, and leave this world, we don't want to just take the leftovers with us into eternity, we want to keep our best!Jephthah was a sad man in the Bible, but I think when he gets to heaven, his perceptive might change. The emotion on earth didn't last forever, but the emotion in heaven will last forever.