Shibboleth and the Minor Judges

The men of Ephraim cross over: "Wherefore passedst thou over to fight against the children of Ammon, and didst not call us to go with thee? we will burn thine house upon thee with fire." Jephthah answers that he did call them, and they did not come.

Gilead defeats Ephraim and takes the fords of the Jordan. "When those Ephraimites which were escaped said, Let me go over; that the men of Gilead said unto him, Art thou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay; then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand."

Jephthah judges six years and is buried in Gilead. Ibzan of Bethlehem has thirty sons and thirty daughters, and arranges marriages for them outside his clan; Elon of Zebulun judges ten years; Abdon of Pirathon has "forty sons and thirty nephews, that rode on threescore and ten ass colts."

One word

Shibboleth means "ear of grain" (or a flowing stream). The Gileadites said it with "sh"; the Ephraimites said "s." The story shows a real dialect difference used as an identity test; it does not tell us the exact phonetics of ancient Hebrew sibilants, which scholars reconstruct differently. The Vulgate adds an explanation: "Scibboleth, which is interpreted 'ear of grain'." The library's Greek (Giguet) has "say 'ear of grain'" and omits the sound.

A word that entered English

"Shibboleth" now means a test word or custom that marks insiders from outsiders. Similar pronunciation tests appear in later conflicts.

42,000

The figure is large for tribal warfare. The Hebrew ʾeleph can mean "thousand" or a clan unit, which some use to reduce such numbers; others take it as narrative hyperbole. No independent count exists.