Charles Ellicott Commentary Judges 12:6

"then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth; and he said Sibboleth; for he could not frame to pronounce it right: then they laid hold on him, and slew him at the fords of the Jordan. And there fell at that time of Ephraim forty and two thousand." — Judges 12:6 (ASV)

Say now Shibboleth. —The word means “ford” (Psalms 69:2); “depth of waters” (Judges 12:15); “water flood” (Isaiah 27:12); “channel.” The Septuagint renders it (Codex B) “an ear of corn” (Vulgate, quod interpretatur spica), and the word might have this meaning also (as it has in Genesis 41:5), because the root from which it is derived means both “to flow” and “to spring.” In the Alexandrian manuscript of the Septuagint the rendering is, “Tell us then the watchword;” but that is rather an explanation than a translation.

And he said Sibboleth. —

“And how ungrateful Ephraim
Had dealt with Jephthah—who by argument
Not worse than by his shield and spear
Defended Israel from the Ammonite
Had not his prowess quelled their pride
In that sore battle where so many died,
Without reprieve, adjudged to death
For want of well pronouncing Shibboleth.”

Milton, Samson Agonistes, lines 282-289.

The word Shibboleth has become a proverb for the minute differences that religious parties thrust into exaggerated prominence and defend with internecine ferocity. In this instance, however, the defective pronunciation was not the reason for putting men to death, but only the sign that the man was an Ephraimite. In theological warfare, the differences of watchword or utterance have sometimes been the actual cause of the hatred and persecution. Sometimes, the two opposing parties have been in agreement on every single essential fact but have simply preferred other formulas to express it, which has failed to cause any diminution in the fierceness of opinions. “It was,” says South, “the very shibboleth of the party, nothing being so much in fashion with them as the name, nor more out of fashion, and out of sight too, as the thing itself” (Sermons, 6:128).

For he could not frame to pronounce it right. —This is a most singular circumstance, and it is one that, if it stood alone, would have decisive weight in the question of chronology. Nothing is more natural or more analogous to common linguistic phenomena than for differences of dialect and pronunciation to develop between tribes divided by the deep barrier of the Jordan valley. These differences would arise all the more rapidly if the Eastern tribes were powerfully subjected to Syrian and other foreign influences .

Still, it must have required a certain lapse of time before a difference so marked as the inability of the Western tribes to pronounce the letter sh could have arisen (Vulgate, eadem litera spicam exprimere non valens). Cassel quotes an interesting parallel from the war of the Flemish against the French. On May 25, 1802, all the French were detected by their inability to pronounce the words Scilt ende friend. In the Septuagint and Vulgate, Shibboleth could not be reproduced because the sound sh is unknown in Greek and Latin. Hence, the Septuagint uses stachus, “wheat-ear,” for Shibboleth, and leaves out Sibboleth altogether.

Slew him. —We might wish that the meaning were that assigned to the word by the Arabic version, “they led him across.” The word means, rather, massacred, butchered; Vulgate, jugulabant. . The Septuagint renders it “sacrificed”—almost as though each Ephraimite were regarded as a human sacrifice.

Forty and two thousand. —This immense slaughter effectually reduced the strength and arrogance of this overweening tribe. It is not, of course, meant that 42,000 were butchered at the fords, but only that this was the number of the invading army, or the number of those who fell in the campaign.