The Deadly Lisp of Pride Text: Judges 12:1-6
Introduction: The Green-Eyed Monster
The book of Judges is a brutal and bloody book, and it is so for our instruction. It holds up a mirror to the unvarnished reality of the human heart when men do what is right in their own eyes. And what they do is almost always shot through with envy, pride, and a lust for vainglory. We like to think of ourselves as more sophisticated than these ancient tribal warriors, but the operating system of the sinful heart has not had a significant update since the fall. The packaging is slicker, but the code is the same.
This passage is a case study in what happens when God grants a great deliverance and certain people are more offended by who God used than they are grateful for the salvation itself. The tribe of Ephraim is a repeat offender in this regard. You may recall that after Gideon's victory over the Midianites, the men of Ephraim picked a fight with him for the same reason. "Why did you go to fight Midian without us?" (Judges 8:1). Gideon, a smoother diplomat than Jephthah, managed to placate them with flattery. But the spiritual disease was not cured, and here the infection breaks out again, this time with catastrophic consequences.
Ephraim's problem is the problem of the elder brother in the parable of the prodigal son. They are furious that the father is celebrating a victory they did not engineer. Their pride is so inflated that they would rather see the whole family suffer than to rejoice in a blessing that does not magnify their own importance. They cannot stand the fact that God raised up a deliverer, Jephthah, an outcast and the son of a prostitute, to save Israel. God's choice was an offense to their tribal prestige. And so, instead of bringing a thank offering, they bring a torch. They would rather burn down their brother's house than admit that God worked through him. This is the spirit of Cain, and it is alive and well in the world, and, we must confess, it is a weed that is constantly trying to grow in the soil of our own hearts.
This is not just an ancient blood feud. It is a warning to the Church in every age. When God blesses another ministry, another church, another pastor, is our first instinct to rejoice, or is it to find fault? Is it to say, "Praise God for His work," or is it to say, "Why didn't they call us? Why weren't we consulted?" The spirit of Ephraim is the spirit of sectarian pride, and it always leads to conflict and, ultimately, to death.
The Text
Then the men of Ephraim were summoned, and they crossed to Zaphon and said to Jephthah, "Why did you cross over to fight against the sons of Ammon, but did not call us to go with you? We will burn your house down on you."
Then Jephthah said to them, "I and my people were at great strife with the sons of Ammon. And I cried out to you, but you did not save me from their hand.
And I saw that you would not save me, so I took my life in my hands and crossed over against the sons of Ammon, and Yahweh gave them into my hand. Why then have you come up to me this day to fight against me?"
Then Jephthah gathered all the men of Gilead and fought Ephraim; and the men of Gilead struck Ephraim down because they said, "You are fugitives of Ephraim, O Gileadites, in the midst of Ephraim and in the midst of Manasseh."
And the Gileadites captured the fords of the Jordan opposite Ephraim. And it happened when any of the fugitives of Ephraim said, "Let me cross over," the men of Gilead would say to him, "Are you an Ephraimite?" If he said, "No,"
then they would say to him, "Say now, 'Shibboleth.' " But he said, "Sibboleth," for he could not pronounce it correctly. Then they seized him and slaughtered him at the fords of the Jordan. Thus there fell at that time 42,000 of Ephraim.
(Judges 12:1-6 LSB)
The Proud Threat (v. 1)
We begin with the belligerent complaint from the men of Ephraim.
"Then the men of Ephraim were summoned, and they crossed to Zaphon and said to Jephthah, 'Why did you cross over to fight against the sons of Ammon, but did not call us to go with you? We will burn your house down on you.'" (Judges 12:1)
Notice the posture. They don't send a delegation with a question. They muster their forces, cross the Jordan, and issue a threat. Their question is utterly disingenuous. It is not a request for information; it is an accusation wrapped in a question mark. The real charge is not that they were excluded, but that their permission was not sought, their supremacy was not acknowledged. They saw themselves as the premier tribe, the natural leaders of Israel. For Jephthah, a Gileadite from the other side of the river, a man of questionable birth, to lead a national deliverance without bending the knee to them was an intolerable insult.
And their solution is not a strongly worded letter to the editor. It is arson and murder. "We will burn your house down on you." This is the logic of wounded pride. When you believe you are the center of the universe, anyone who acts as though you are not becomes a mortal enemy. They are not celebrating the defeat of the Ammonites. They are not grateful that their fellow Israelites have been saved from oppression. All they can see is their own bruised ego. Their pride has made them blind to God's providence and deaf to the call for gratitude. They have become allies of chaos against the very order God has just established through Jephthah.
The Plain Rebuttal (v. 2-3)
Jephthah, unlike Gideon, does not meet their arrogance with flattery. He meets it with cold, hard facts.
"Then Jephthah said to them, 'I and my people were at great strife with the sons of Ammon. And I cried out to you, but you did not save me from their hand. And I saw that you would not save me, so I took my life in my hands and crossed over against the sons of Ammon, and Yahweh gave them into my hand. Why then have you come up to me this day to fight against me?'" (Judges 12:2-3 LSB)
Jephthah's defense is simple and devastating. First, he exposes their lie. "I cried out to you, but you did not save me." Their pretense of wanting to help is a complete sham. They had their chance to join the fight when it was dangerous, and they sat on their hands. Now that the victory is won and the glory is being handed out, they show up with swords drawn. They wanted the spoils of victory without the risk of battle.
Second, Jephthah testifies to his own faith. "I took my life in my hands." This is the language of desperate trust in God. When his brothers abandoned him, he threw himself entirely on the mercy and power of Yahweh. And God honored that faith. "Yahweh gave them into my hand." Jephthah is careful to give God the credit. This is what truly infuriates the Ephraimites. It is not just that Jephthah won, but that Yahweh gave him the victory. Their fight is not ultimately with Jephthah, but with God's sovereign choice to use him. Jephthah's final question lays their sin bare: "Why then have you come up to me this day to fight against me?" You are not here to fight Ammonites. You are here to fight me, your brother, in the immediate aftermath of a great salvation. This is the height of impiety.
The Taunt and the Slaughter (v. 4-6)
The truth does not pacify the men of Ephraim; it enrages them. When pride is confronted with facts, it does not repent; it doubles down with insults.
"Then Jephthah gathered all the men of Gilead and fought Ephraim; and the men of Gilead struck Ephraim down because they said, 'You are fugitives of Ephraim, O Gileadites, in the midst of Ephraim and in the midst of Manasseh.'" (Judges 12:4 LSB)
The Ephraimites resort to name-calling. They mock the Gileadites as "fugitives," essentially calling them country-bumpkin runaways, a splinter group without a real identity. It is a sneering insult designed to question their very legitimacy. Words are not just vibrations in the air. They are weapons. This taunt was the final straw. It revealed the depth of Ephraim's contempt, and it ignited a civil war.
The battle is swift and decisive. The Gileadites, fresh from defeating the Ammonites, rout the arrogant Ephraimites. But the story takes its most famous and chilling turn at the river.
"And the Gileadites captured the fords of the Jordan... they would say to him, 'Say now, "Shibboleth." ' But he said, 'Sibboleth,' for he could not pronounce it correctly. Then they seized him and slaughtered him at the fords of the Jordan. Thus there fell at that time 42,000 of Ephraim." (Judges 12:5-6 LSB)
The fords of the Jordan become a place of judgment. The Gileadites set up a checkpoint, and the password is a simple word: Shibboleth. It likely means "stream" or "ear of grain." But the Ephraimite dialect had a peculiar feature; they could not pronounce the "sh" sound. Their prideful identity, which they had flaunted with their taunts, was now betrayed by their own tongues. Their inability to form the sound was a phonetic marker of their origin, and it became their death sentence.
This is a terrifying picture of how sin works. What begins as pride in the heart manifests itself in threatening words, then in contemptuous insults, and it is finally judged by the speech of the mouth. A tiny, almost insignificant distinction, a lisp, becomes the dividing line between life and death for forty-two thousand men. This is not a story about the tragedy of dialectical differences. It is a story about how God's judgment can seize upon the very things in which we place our identity and turn them into the instruments of our destruction. Their mouths, which they used to threaten and taunt, became the very things that condemned them.
The Gospel Shibboleth
It is easy for us to read this story and thank God that we are not like these brutish Ephraimites. But that would be to miss the point entirely. The spirit of Ephraim is the default spirit of fallen man. We are all born with a native pride that bristles at the sovereignty of God. We want to be the heroes of our own salvation. We want a God who consults us, who asks our permission, who runs His plans by our committee for approval.
And God, in His mercy, has given the whole world a "Shibboleth" test. It is a test of identity, a test of allegiance, and it is found in the confession of the mouth. The apostle Paul tells us, "if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved" (Romans 10:9).
The world can say "Jesus." It can even say many nice things about Him. It can say "Sibboleth." It can talk about Jesus the good teacher, Jesus the moral example, Jesus the revolutionary. But it cannot, with its own unregenerate tongue, say "Shibboleth." It cannot say "Jesus is Lord." To say that Jesus is Lord is to say that Caesar is not, that my autonomous self is not, that my tribal pride is not. It is an unconditional surrender. And just as the Ephraimites were physically unable to form the sound, the natural man is spiritually unable to make this confession from the heart. As Paul says elsewhere, "no one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except in the Holy Spirit" (1 Corinthians 12:3).
The new birth is, in a very real sense, a divine speech therapy. The Holy Spirit comes to us in our proud, Ephraimite rebellion and teaches us to speak a new language. He circumcises our hearts and our lips, so that we can properly pronounce the name that is above every name. He breaks our pride and enables us to joyfully confess the lordship of the one whom God has appointed as the true Jephthah, the true deliverer.
The fords of the Jordan are a grim foreshadowing of the final judgment, where there will be a great separation. All of humanity will be brought to that river, and a test will be administered. The question will be one of identity: "Are you an Ephraimite?" meaning, are you relying on your own tribe, your own works, your own pride? Or do you belong to the true Gilead, the kingdom of God's dear Son? The proof will be in the confession. Not just a word spoken, but a life lived in submission to the Word made flesh. Those who have spent their lives trying to say "Sibboleth" will find themselves exposed. But those who, by grace, have been taught by the Spirit to say "Shibboleth," to confess that Jesus is Lord, will be brought safely across the river into the promised land.