First off, yes He does. He demands Abraham sacrifice his son. The command word He uses in the Binding of Isaac story is "olah" which means: burnt offering. That He later allows the ram to be substituted does not change the fact that He DID command a human sacrifice. You can't just pretend you don't see that.
Secondly, God isn't making any demand in the Jephthah story. Jephthah is going rogue. The word Jephthah vows is the same as God's command to Abraham: "olah".
Finally, there is no substitution in the Jephthah story.The text says that he did as he vowed. That's it. He killed her and burned he up.
You have to deal with the text as it exists. You can't add, subtract or ignore elements to fit your desires. When people try to whitewash this story, they wind up missing the whole point. Jephthah wasn't trying to please God. Jephthah was trying to be God.
Did you not read what I said? How can I pretend I didn't see it when I commented on that very passage? Are you pretending that God contradicts Himself by condemning the sacrificial burning of human beings to Him and then expecting someone to do that very thing? Like I said - and Scripture confirms - this was a TEST of Abraham's faith. Can you find anywhere else in the Bible where God demands the sacrifice of a human being on a burnt altar?
As to your other points, I agree that Jephthah acted foolishly and impulsively and he lived to regret it which reinforces the teachings about the making of vows to the Lord such as:
And again I disagree with your conclusion that Jephthah actually killed his own daughter, his ONLY child, as a burnt sacrifice to God. Had he really done that, we would read about God's condemnation of him as well as His rejection of the offering - and we don't. In fact, he was appointed as a judge over Israel for six years and we are told that "the Spirit of the LORD came upon" him. I reason that if Jephthah had sinned against the Lord by murdering his daughter - a clear proscription of God, he would have been condemned by the Lord and he would have lost his place as judge of the people of Israel - what kind of example would he have been?
I respect your right to interpret this event in the way you choose. I disagree with you because I believe it goes against God's character to have excused and/or accepted something He condemned others for doing. It's not "whitewashing" the story to understand that the ancient Hebrew language used words that could have alternate meanings depending upon the context as described in the OP of the thread article.