Jg. 12: The Life and Death Game of Password

Judges 12:6 "He said, "Sibboleth," because he could not pronounce the word correctly, they seized him and killed him at the fords of the Jordan."

Well, the Ephraimites are all mad because they didn't have a chance to bust some Ammonite head. They muster some troops and go to Jephthah's crib and threaten to burn it down over his head. Jephthah's like "Whatever, I sent messengers to ask you to fight with me, and you didn't answer, so take a flying funk at a rolling donut." He had to take the Gileadites and fight the Ephraimites, which is too bad, because it's civil war in Israel. The house is divided against itself. And not only, this infighting was completely pointless, as the Ammonites had been conquered. It was all over. Weirdos.

So anyway, the Gileadites (called renegades by the Ephraimites, in spite of the Ephraimites picking the fight) take over the passages across Jordan into the land of Ephraim. Somewhere along the way, someone discovered a genius way of identifying someone as a survivor of Ephraim. There was some sort of innate speech impediment or pronunciation deviation where the Ephraimites would pronounce the Gileadite password "Shibboleth" as "Sibboleth." Like how southerners pronounce "Wawl-Moart." 42,000 Ephraimites were exterminated with this method.

Jephthath, a polarizing figure, a political genius, a military hero, and a rash vower died after 6 years at the helm of Israel.

After Jephthah came Ibzan, who had 30 sons and 30 daughters. Prolific breeder. And an amazing genetic happenstance as in 60 offspring, exactly half are one gender. I'm no scientist... Anyway, dude gave away all his daughters outside his clans, while his sons brought in wives from outside his clan. This whole thing sounds suspiciously made up, like a child's fairy tale, but who am I? Ibzan led Israel for 7 years without incident.

For ten years, Elon the Zebulunite led Israel, again without any recorded incident or outside claim to fame.

Abdon from Pirathon was next in line, and his claim to fame was having forty sons and thirty grandsons ride on seventy donkeys. Woo hoo.

And it would be easy to discount these men as sort of do-nothing nobodies...but without incident means without war, I'd assume. They led in silence. In peace. They sought no renown other than to lead. And all of these men were put in place by God.