I've been spending time in Judges lately, and one detail about Jephthah stopped me in my tracks. Jephthah wasn't the man anyone would have expected God to use. He was the son of a prostitute. His own brothers rejected him and drove him away because of the circumstances surrounding his birth (Judges 11:1–3). He grew up on the outside looking in. Yet when the elders of Gilead came asking for his help, something remarkable happened. Before he ever picked up a sword, he picked up Israel's history. As Jephthah spoke with the king of the Ammonites, he demonstrated an incredible understanding of...