Judges 12:1-7 // Shibboleth

Judges 12:1-7

Why the Ephraimites hated Jephthah enough to want to murder him is not very clear. Their justification that he should have let them do the fighting sounds like bureaucratic nitpicking. Maybe Ephraim had a special army that was meant to fight off invaders. At any rate the previous judge had been a Gileadite, so there is no clear precedent for this. Besides this, Ephraim had been unable even to defend themselves. Perhaps the Ephraimites were worried about the prospect of a bandit being chief of Gilead.

Whatever their reasons, the Ephraimites raised an army to go and kill Jephthah. It may be that not one of those soldiers made it home. The Gileadites not only defeated the Ephraimites, they guarded their route home and executed them one by one as they tried to escape. They identified their cousins of Ephraim by their accent, they were not able to make a "sh" sound, using the word Shibboleth, which has acquired an idiomatic meaning today.
(Definition of the English idiom here if you want it. The original Hebrew word has the idea "growing, flowing")

Why the Gileadites were so cruel that they wanted to kill every Ephraimite is not clear either, they may have been afraid of the Ephraimites trying another invasion.

What lessons can we take from this closing chapter of Jephthah's life? I see some lessons for church politics. One is that the group in power may be surprised at the result if they make war on the radical and slightly unsavoury people that God is using. Another is that whatever side of a conflict you are on, you may well get hurt. Even though they were practically part of the same tribe, the Gileadites had no mercy on the Ephraimites. Don't join an army that's going to murder a man and his family. Don't get on the bandwagon trying to destroy the reputation of a man that's trying to serve God, even if he has real problems.
Finally, despite the politics and stark evil; Israel was still God's people with God's message of truth. Don't sacrifice your salvation for a grudge or for your disgust with those who claim to represent God but do not.