Shibboleth

Biblical Text and Narrative

The word shibboleth appears in Judges 12:1-6. After the judge Jephthah had led the Gileadites to victory over the children of Ammon, the men of Ephraim gathered and confronted Jephthah, complaining that he had not called them to the battle (Judges 12:1). The quarrel escalated into fighting between Gilead and Ephraim, and the Gileadites prevailed.

The Gileadites seized the fords of the Jordan River and asked anyone who tried to cross whether he was an Ephraimite. If he answered no, they had him say "Shibboleth." If he pronounced it "Sibboleth," they took him to be an Ephraimite and killed him on the spot. The text records that forty-two thousand Ephraimites fell at that time (Judges 12:6).

Background and Meaning of the Word

Elsewhere in the Old Testament, the Hebrew word shibboleth means an "ear of grain" (Genesis 41) or "flowing water, flood" (Psalm 69). The text does not indicate which sense is intended in this episode. Some interpreters favor the sense of "flood" or "stream" because the scene takes place at the fords of the Jordan, but this reading is not certain.

Although Gilead, east of the Jordan, and Ephraim, west of it, belonged to the same Israelite tribal stock, they apparently spoke different dialects. Scholars differ in explaining why the Ephraimites could not properly pronounce the "sh" sound. Some hold that the sound did not exist in the Ephraimite dialect; others suggest that it was pronounced as a different sound. Ephraim had earlier voiced a similar complaint against Gideon (Judges 8:1).

Significance in the Wider Bible

This episode depicts Israel, which had been fighting foreign enemies, descending into intertribal slaughter. It illustrates the division and disorder of the period of the judges as portrayed in the Book of Judges, and it is read as part of a progression leading to the later war with the tribe of Benjamin (Judges 20).

The New Testament does not cite this event directly. It does, however, contain a similar scene in which a person's speech reveals his origin: in the courtyard of the high priest's house, Peter was told, "thy speech bewrayeth thee" (Matthew 26:73). Many interpreters also read this episode in contrast with the New Testament teaching that breaks down barriers of origin and descent (Galatians 3:28; Ephesians 2:14-17).

Interpretation and Points of Discussion

• Assessment of Jephthah: Hebrews 11:32 lists Jephthah among the heroes of faith. Nevertheless, many interpreters view Jephthah critically because of this episode and the incident of his vow. Interpreters differ on how to reconcile these two perspectives.
• The number forty-two thousand: The text says only that this was the number who fell "at that time." It does not specify whether the figure refers solely to those killed at the fords through the pronunciation test or to the casualties of the entire conflict. Some scholars also suggest that the Hebrew word translated "thousand" may denote a military unit, raising the possibility that the actual number was smaller.
• Homiletic application: In preaching, the episode is commonly applied in two ways. One is that a believer's identity is revealed in his or her speech and life. The other is a warning against communities that use minor differences as a pretext for excluding and harming fellow believers.

Later Usage

In English and many other languages, "shibboleth" has become a common noun referring to a word or marker that identifies whether someone belongs to a particular group, or to a custom peculiar to a particular group. During the Great Kantō Earthquake in Japan in 1923, some Japanese are known to have identified Koreans by making them pronounce certain words. This incident is sometimes cited alongside the shibboleth episode as an example of identifying people by their pronunciation.