Riberty - Judges 12

After Jeph’s victory over the Ammonites, Ephraim is up to their old tricks and approaches Jeph demanding to know why he didn’t call them to go fight. This of course is a ruse because they don’t want to fight but they do want to be the first in line for honors and the spoils of war. They did this same thing to Gideon in chapter 8 and Gideon handled it masterfully with lots of diplomacy. This time however, they added a threat “we will burn thine house upon thee with fire.” They threatened the wrong man because he Jeph was not a diplomat and answered that he did in fact call for Ephraim to come fight and they didn’t send anyone so not only were they NOT going to be rewarded or praised, Jeph was going to fight them. He also interestingly cites God and being the reason why they won that victory. Another difference this time versus what they did to Gideon was that they apparently sent a huge army to come intimidate Jeph and his men, at least 42,000 men which will be important later. Additionally, these Ephraimite soldiers crossed from their homes on the west side of the Jordan river onto the east side to make a stink to Jeph on his home turf on the east side. So this huge Ephraimite army crosses the Jordan river to confront Jeph and he takes it poorly, and they start fighting physically.

The Ephraimite soldiers realize that they are going to lose this battle and take off back over the river to get back home so Jeph sends his soldiers to guard the fording areas but they run into a problem. The Ephraimite soldiers are asked if they are Ephraimite and they say no, so someone comes up with a genius idea to ask the man they suspect to be an escaping soldier to say the word “Shibboleth” because Ephraim had developed an accent to the point that they couldn’t say the “sh” sound so it would come out as “Sibboleth” and so they would know that they were a lying Ephraimite solder trying to escape and kill him immediately. This reminds me of the show they made about the Unabomber and a judge tells a story about how when he was on guard duty at night during WW2, they chose challenge words with the letter “L” in it because the Japanese pronounced it as an ”R” so the word was often “Liberty” and a Japanese soldier trying to access the American base would say “Riberty” and they would shoot him. This is a similar concept and I think it’s very interesting. All this led to the slaughter of 42,000 Ephraimite soldiers, which is a ton and I don’t know what they expected sending that many soldiers to confront Jeph, a man they knew to be aggressive, that’s why they picked him.

Jeph only judged Israel for 6 years before he died, and TB noted that this was not a very long time beacsue usually the judges ruled for 20-80 years, and he says that this short time of rule was not unnoticed by the Hebrew sages throughout time. TB says that tradition was that Jeph contracted leprosy as a curse because of his sacrifice of his daughter and that’s why he died to fast. It’s also speculated that he just died early because he dealt so brutally with the Ephraimite soldiers, which begs the question, did they all need to die? These soldiers killed at the river were fleeing back to their homes, they were no longer fighting, they had given up, so killing them was unnecessary.

After Jeph died, a man named Ibzan judged Israel. TB says that he was probably from the tribe of Judah because he was from Bethlehem. He’s also noted to have had 30 sons and 30 daughters. TB says that while he probably did have 30 of his own daughters, the daughters referenced here were the 30 daughters-in-law and that they were all foreign born women. TB says that this wasn’t because they just loved foreign women, these were all wives married into Israel through peace treaties, thus demonstrating just how far Israel had fallen from upholding God’s commandments that even their judges condoned intermarriage and the bringing in of idolatry to Israel. He judged Israel for 7 years and then died and was buried. Elon, a Zebulonite, was next and judged Israel for 10 years before he died. The Abdom was after that and he was rich and powerful because all his 40 sons and 30 nephews rode ass colts, or young donkeys that were highly prized animals. He judged Israel for 8 years then died and was buried in Ephraim “in the mount of the Amalekites.”