“The men of Gil‘ad cut off Efrayim from the crossings over the Yarden, and whenever anyone from Efrayim tried to escape and said, ‘Let me go across,’ the men of Gil‘ad would ask him, ‘Are you from Efrayim?’ and if he said, ‘No,’ they would tell him to say ‘Shibbolet.’ If he said, ‘Sibbolet,’ because he could not make his mouth pronounce it right, they took hold of him and killed him on the spot at the Yarden crossing; at that time 42,000 men of Efrayim died.”-Judges 12:5-6
The battle between Jephthah and Ephraim primarily took place on the eastern side of the Jordan River.
The Ephraimite soldiers were trying to cross the Jordan to escape to their own territory that lay in the western regions.
Aware of this Jephthah stationed his men at strategic points all along the Jordan River to stop them.
However, there was one problem.
Whenever an Ephraimite was stopped at the border, he would deny he was an Ephraimite.
So in order to avoid being deceived, a clever officer came up with a simple test.
He had the men at the border attempt to pronounce the word SHIBBOLETH.
If they couldn’t say it properly and instead said SIBBOLETH, that was a dead giveaway they were Ephraimites and were killed on the spot.
So what exactly did Shibboleth mean?
Well, like a lot of Hebrew words, it had 2 different meanings.
It could mean an “ear of corn”.
Or it could mean the “overflowing waters of a stream”.
In this context, obviously it meant the flowing waters of a stream.
Another thing and I mentioned it yesterday.
Here we see just how fragmented Israel had become over the long period of time that had passed since they entered the Promised Land.
The existence of different dialects is evidence of this fragmentation.
This is like the United States where we can tell where someone grew up based on their accent.
To that point, I find it interesting that the Ephraimites had lost their ability to say the “sh” sound.
In other words, they could say the word sip, but for the life of them, they couldn’t say the word ship.
This would prove fatal to the Ephraimites.
Because 42,000 of them lost their lives due to that simple pronunciation error..
As a result of this tremendous loss of life, Ephraim’s power and influence was weakened considerably and would stay that way for many years to come.
All because they had insulted a son of a whore and the men of Gilead who fought alongside him.
A civil war of this type is stupid and of the Devil. As in most cases in these older writings, all numbers are multiplied by 10 as a mistake was made or they did it on purpose.
In Hebrew, the difference between these two pronunciations is based on the two diffferent dialects within the Hebrew language.
Today, these two dialects are split between the Ashkenazie (European) Jews and Sephardic (Hispanic) Jews, with the one pronouncing the letter shin (ש) as “shin” and the other pronuoncing it as “sin”.
In Hebrew, when using the Masoretic vowel points, there is a dot above either the top right of the letter (to signify pronouncing it as “shin”) or to the top left of the letter, in which case it is pronounced “sin”.
Another example is with the letter tav (ת), which is either a strong “t” or an “s”, as in Shabbat or Shabbos.
@Richoka, this shows that a simple pronunciation error can lead to a great loss. Let us be careful as no sin is small. Thanks for the post and the emails. I am following closely and praying for you.
@Steven, thanks for the enlightment.