SHIBBOLETH or SPEECH MAY SAVE YOUR LIFE
Supplement to Act II - Conquest and Kings

SHIBBOLETH

OR

SPEECH MAY SAVE YOUR LIFE

By Bob Allen

                Eltekeh threw a stone to turn the sheep back from the edge of the ravine and then sat down to think.  He had a problem.  He loved his sheep and would have stayed with them forever had the choice been up to him.  But his mother wanted him to be more than a shepherd.

                Dannah gloried in her distant relationship to Moses and Aaron.  She had married Eltekeh’s father when very young and loved the life of a shepherd’s wife.  But that didn’t keep her from wanting something better for her son.

                “Eltekeh, you could really be someone great in Israel.”  He had her words memorized he had heard them so often.  “All you need is more education.  The judges who are leading our people come from all of the tribes.   Anyone can be a judge if God calls him, but you have to be able to talk right.”

                His mother didn’t think that anyone in the city of Shiloh where they lived talked right.  Her family came from Tekoa and to her those people were the only Israelites who talked correctly. 

                The sheep had wandered close to the ravine again and Eltekeh picked up some more stones to warn them away.  His father would be mad if he lost a lamb just because he hadn’t paid attention.

                “Get away from there you s’eep.  Get back where you belong.”

                The rock did a better job than his shout and the flock moved back toward safety so Eltekeh returned to his thoughts.  He had already completed school, the boys in his village only went for three years.  But Dannah wanted him to take another class, a speech class.

                “Eltekeh,” she would say.  “What if you move back to my hometown of Tekoa? They would laugh at you if you weren’t able to speak correctly.

                Eltekeh had no intention of ever moving to Tekoa, but he couldn’t say that to his mother.  To her Tekoa was like Jerusalem, beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole world.  His visits had disappointed him,  revealing barren hillsides very different from the green pastures around Shiloh.  His father even teased Dannah about her home country.  “Why, it’s so dry in Tekoa the s’eep won’t eat after a rain.  They don’t think the grass is edible unless it’s brown.”

                His mother would just smile.  “Go ahead and tease.  I like Shiloh, but Tekoa is beautiful to me.”

                A lamb gamboling off toward the ridge caught Eltekeh’s attention.  “You stupid s’eep.  Get away from there.”

                Sometimes he thought he was just like the sheep he watched.  His mother was the shepherd and he had no chance of escaping from her watchful eye.  He would just have to take the class and make the best of it.  But he wasn’t about to talk like a silly Tekoaite around his friends.

                The next week Eltekeh struggled out of bed before sunrise and trudged through the village to the house of Ben-ami.  His teacher did not come from the tribe of Ephraim like all the other residents of Shiloh.  He came from Gad, east of the Jordan River.  He lived in Shiloh because the Ammonites had raided his village and killed his family while he worked out in the field.  He considered Shiloh a place of exile.  Teaching school provided the income which would have come from his crops back home.  The village school boys came to his house later each morning.  Eltekeh’s class consisted of just him and Ben-ami.

                “Today we are going to work on our sibilants,” the teacher handed him a clay shard with the words which brought dread into his very soul.  All of them started with the same letters.  “Sh.”

                “S’ip,” he began.

                “And what does a s’ip do?”

                “A s’ip sails on the sea.”

                “No.  that’s a ship.  A ship sails on the sea.  You sip a drink of cold water, but a ship sails on the sea.”

                “But, that’s what I said.”

                “Well, say it then.”

                “A s’ip sails on the sea.”

                “No, no.  A ship.  A ship.  Sh, sh, sh, sh, ship.”

                Eltekeh watched his lips and tried his best.  “Ssssssss’ip.”

                “All right.  Next word.” 

                Eltekeh took a deep breath.  “S’epherd.”

                “Use it in a sentence.”

                “The s’epherd was watching his s’eep.”

                “The shepherd was watching his sheep.”

                “But that’s what I said.”

                “No.  You said the s’epherd was watching his s’eep.”

                “Can we work on something else for awhile?”

                “Not until you learn how to say your ‘sh’.  Now, try the next word.”

                Eltekeh groaned as he looked again at the list.  What a waste of time.  He would never talk that way.  The guys would roll on the ground laughing if he said “Shiloh,” instead of “S’iloh.”

                “S’ape,” he tried again.

                “And what, pray tell, is a s’ape.”

                “A circle, or a square.  Or that funny s’ape on a camel’s humpback.”

                “That’s shape.  In the shape of a circle.  The shape of a square.  The shape of a camel.  You have to form the “h” after the “s.”  Can’t you get that through your skull?”

                For the next hour Eltekeh tried to form his s’ips into ships, his s’epherds into shepherds and his s’ores into shores.  He could say the “sh” sound alone, like he was telling someone to be quiet.  But in a word—impossible.

                “That’s all,” Ben-ami finally stood and looked out the door. “The boys are on their way for class.  Take the list and work on it until next time.”

                It took three months but Ben-ami refused to give in to Eltekeh’s stubbornness.  On the day he could correctly pronounce the sentence, “The shepherd of the sheep shot the she-wolf on the shore near  Shiloh,” Ben-ami announced that the class was over.  He gave a glowing report to Dannah and Eltekeh quoted the same sentence for her, but none of his friends ever heard him say anything except “S’iloh” when they were nearby.

                When he fell in love with a girl named Sharona he wooed his like any good Shilohite, telling her that the s’ape of his heart was such that he wanted to s’are his very life with her in  order to s’ow her how much he loved her.  Being from Shiloh she understood perfectly.

                One day word arrived in Shiloh that a man named Jair had become judge in the land of  Gilead.  All of Ephraim rejoiced to hear that a strong judge stood between them and the Ammonites.  Eltekeh had his own herd by then and didn’t want any Ammonites stopping in for free mutton.  For the next twenty-two years Jair provided a buffer zone of safety and then he died.   Small bands of Ammonites were spotted in the hills and Eltekeh began to lose a sheep now and then.  For the first time since he was just a boy he remembered his mother’s prediction that anyone could become a judge if God called him.  His own opinion argued that anyone could be a judge if he grew angry enough.

                The third year after Jair died the entire army of Ammon crossed the Jordan.  50,000 men and no provisions.   Satisfying hungry soldiers meant slaughtering the nearest flocks and harvesting the nearest fields.  Eltekeh watched in frustrated silence as the Ammonites killed seven hundred of his best sheep to provide a meal for their army.

                Soon after the invasion word arrived in Shiloh that a new judge named Jephthah had arisen in Gilead.  Eltekeh breathed a private sigh of relief since he really hadn’t felt any desperate urge to pursue the office himself.  If Jephthah wanted the job, Jephthah could have the job.

                With Jephthah raising an army in Gilead, however, some of the men began encouraging recruitment in Ephraim.  They wanted their own revenge for the destruction of their land in the Ammonite invasion.  Posters appeared on the city gates and war fever raged.  Eltekeh signed in anger over the loss of his sheep. 

                The new recruits soon numbered 42,000 and a messenger traveled to Jephthah to inform him that the Ephraimite Regulars stood ready to help.  The men marched in parades, practiced sword-fighting, engaged in archery contests, sat around, ate tons of potatoes and waited for their orders from Jephthah.  But the call never came.  Finally a messenger from across the Jordan appeared in the city gate.

                “Jephthah has won a great victory,” he shouted.  “An army from Reuben, Gad and Manasseh pursued the king of Ammon into his own territory, decimating his troops.  Praise Jehovah for the great victory of Jephthah over the enemies of the people of God.”

                Eltekeh and his friends didn’t feel like praising Jehovah.  They had been looking forward to sinking their teeth into some tender Ammonite sheep.  They wanted revenge and not just victory.

                “Let’s go get Jephthah,” shouted a voice in the crowd.

                “Right!  Let’s teach him a lesson for slighting us when he went into battle.  He can’t push the S’iloh Regulars around like that.”

                Not everyone was that anxious to fight, but mob fever kicked in and before nightfall the entire army of Ephraim had crossed over the Jordan River to take on the Gileadites under Jephthah.

                The army of Gilead included only a few more men than the Ephraim Regulars, but they definitely had more experience.  As soon as the battle began it became obvious that the raw recruits were sadly inferior to the seasoned warriors from Gilead.  A mass, unorganized retreat headed for the fords back across the river to their own tribal area.  Many of the men of Ephraim died during the headlong retreat but those who reached the river faced another dilemma entirely.  Cavalry from the army of Gilead flanked them and waited at the fords.  Their only hope lay in abandoning their weapons and pretending to be travelers from Reuben, Gad and Manasseh going to visit friends across the Jordan.

                That might have worked except for one problem, the men of Ephraim couldn’t talk right.  As they came down to the shore the men who guarded the passages had no way to tell the difference between those from the various tribes, they were all Israelites.  But their solution was simple.  They asked each of those seeking to cross the river to say “Shibboleth,” the word for the flood stage of the Jordan.

                “S’ibboleth,” the Ephraimite men would say and a sword would whistle through the air, ending their ability to say anything at all.

                Finally it came time for Eltekeh to make the crossing.

                “All right, Ephraimite scum,” scowled a Gileadite soldier.  “Say Shibboleth.”

                Eltekeh paused, his mind rushing back to those early morning lessons from Ben-ami.  “The shepherd of the sheep shot the she-wolf on the shore near Shiloh,” raced through his mind.  “The shepherd of the sheep shot the she-wolf on the shore near Shiloh.”

                The guard raised the bloody sword, ready to separate another Ephraimite head from its torso.

                “Shibboleth,” whispered Eltekeh.  Then louder, “Shibboleth!  Shibboleth.”

                The sword started its downward path and then hesitated.  “What did you say.”

                “Shibboleth,” Eltekeh shouted.  “I said Shibboleth.”

                Forty-two thousand Ephraimites died at the hands of the men of Jephthah that day.  But one survived. 

                Moral: Speech may one day save your life.