"On the face of it, 35-year-old Ben Cnaan has painted a friend, stepdaughter and their dog all looking equally pensive in the blistering sunlight of Israel’s Jezreel Valley."

"Another way of seeing it is defiance in the face of impending tragedy. Ben Cnaan’s portrait is based on the story of Jephthah, a judge who led the Israelites into war with the Ammonites and vowed to God that, if he won, he would sacrifice the first thing he saw on his homecoming. He expected it to be the dog. To his horror, it was his only daughter who rushed out to greet him."

From "Israeli artist Matan Ben Cnaan wins BP portrait award/Top prize of £30,000 awarded for painting that struck judges with its ‘engaging filmic narrative’ inspired by biblical story of Jephthah" in The Guardian.

You can discuss the art and politics angle on this — the Brits giving the Israeli the award perhaps because it could be read as anti-Israel — and the quality of the art — realism achieve through precise copying of a photograph that itself would not have seemed especially great. But I'm going to go right to the Bible story. There are 2 problematic elements to this story:

1.  If Jephthah thought he'd only have to kill his dog and he was thus not offering God that much, he was trying to con God. If he really believed in God and thought God hears and responds to prayers, he should have thought that God knew he was only offering a dog. That should have rendered the prayer ineffective or even put him in a worse position than if he hadn't prayed at all.

2. If Jephthah didn't want to have to kill his only daughter, he should have been a hell of a lot more sure that the dog always comes out first. Don't little children come running impetuously toward the father who is returning from war?

I was going to say that these are 2 defects in the story which render it inherently unbelievable. But I changed my mind as I wrote this. Here's my theory for how the 2 seeming weaknesses in the story can be seen actually to strengthen it. Jephthah was sure the dog would come out first and God knew it and caused the daughter to run out first so Jephthah would get what he deserved for trying to get God's support on the cheap.