The story of Jephthah can be found in the Bible book of Judges, a chronicle of the tribes of Israel after they were led into the Promised Land.

In a fit of undue zeal, Jephthah, initially an outcast, vowed to sacrifice the first living being he encounters after a military victory. Unfortunately, it will be his only daughter, who welcomes the victor with music and dance and then accepts her inescapable fate.

Giacomo Carissimi, Roman initiator of the genre, composed this oratorio in the mid-seventeenth century. Half a century later, Johann Sebastian Bach wrote the cantata Gottes Zeit ist die allerbest Zeit, often called Actus Tragicus. It is probably his oldest funeral cantata and has the smallest line-up within this genre: in addition to four voices and basso continuo, only two recorders and violas.