Tool Beta
Fact Book
The same name traced across the biblical canon and the Second Temple texts, side by side.
Sibboleth
How the men of Ephraim said shibboleth, because their dialect had no sh sound. Jephthah's men used the word at the fords. It picked them out and got them killed.
How the men of Ephraim said shibboleth, because their dialect had no sh sound. Jephthah's men used the word at the fords. It picked them out and got them killed.
Not a person but a word: the way men of Ephraim pronounced "shibboleth" ("ear of grain" or "stream"), since their dialect lacked the "sh" sound. After Jephthah's Gileadites defeated Ephraim, they used the word as a password at the fords of the Jordan, killing any fugitive who could only manage "sibboleth" (Judges 12:5-6). The episode is the origin of "shibboleth" as an English word for a telltale marker of group identity.
H5451
- Judges 12:6
