The pairing with Parashah Chukat, whose narrative includes Israel's request to pass peacefully through Edomite territory being refused, and the subsequent military victories over Sihon and Og that secure land east of the Jordan, rests on the most direct possible connection available in this stretch of the haftarah cycle: Jephthah's message to the Ammonite king retells these exact same events from the parashah almost as a historical brief, citing them as established precedent for why Israel's claim to the land is legitimate rather than the product of unprovoked conquest.
Where the parashah narrates these events as they happen, the request refused, the resulting battles, the haftarah shows how quickly they became settled communal memory, cited generations later as established fact in a formal diplomatic exchange, evidence that the parashah's own narrative had already taken on the weight of a foundational precedent within Israel's own understanding of its rightful claim to its territory.
Jephthah's own personal history, rejected by his family only to become the leader his people desperately need, also echoes a broader pattern already noted in this account with Joseph and with David, an outsider or a rejected figure rising to prominence precisely at the community's moment of greatest need, a theme that recurs across several of the haftarot already covered without being confined to any single portion of the yearly cycle.