Civil Conflict Turns a Word Into a Boundary of Death

“Went northward” can also be read “went over to Zaphon”, a Gadite town in the Jordan valley (Joshua 13:27), and several modern versions take it so. The threat to burn Jephthah’s house over him returns in Samson’s account, where the Philistines make the same threat and carry it out (14:15; 15:6).

“At great strife” is literally “a man of contention”, one in a lawsuit. Jephthah says he called Ephraim and they did not come; chapter 11 records no such appeal, so his claim stands without confirmation in the text.

“I put my life in my hands” is the idiom for taking a mortal risk: Jonathan uses it of David facing Goliath (1 Samuel 19:5), and the woman of Endor of herself when she called up Samuel (1 Samuel 28:21).

The Hebrew of the insult is difficult, and the Greek lacks part of the clause. As it stands, Ephraim scorned the Gileadites as runaways from Ephraim and Manasseh, people without a proper tribe. The civil war is traced to a taunt.

The insult comes back on those who spoke it: the fleeing Ephraimites are called peletim, “escaped ones”, the very word Ephraim had used of Gilead in verse 4, “fugitives”. Those who called others runaways are now the runaways at the fords.

Shibboleth means an ear of grain, or a flowing stream, as in “the floods overflow me” (Psalm 69:2), a fitting word at a river crossing. Ephraim’s dialect apparently had no sh sound. English took the word from this verse for any test that marks who belongs.

Six years is the shortest term of any major judge in the book. The Hebrew says he was buried “in the cities of Gilead”, plural; the Greek reads “in his city in Gilead”. A rabbinic legend took the plural to mean his limbs were buried in many towns.

Which Bethlehem is meant is unclear: Judah’s, or the town of the same name in Zebulun (Joshua 19:15). The Talmud (Bava Batra 91a) identified Ibzan with Boaz of Bethlehem, a tradition, not something the text says.

“Sent abroad” means he married his daughters outside his clan and brought in wives for his sons from outside. Thirty sons and thirty daughters made sixty marriages, a network of alliances. The number thirty recalls Jair’s thirty sons (10:4).

If this is Bethlehem of Judah, Ibzan would be the only judge from Judah after Othniel, and the first judge linked with the town of Boaz and David. The notice gives only the burial place.

Elon was the name of one of Zebulun’s own sons (Genesis 46:14), just as Tola, the judge from Issachar, bore the name of Issachar’s son (10:1). Two minor judges carry the names of their tribes’ founding families.

In Hebrew the name Elon and the place Aijalon are spelled with the same consonants. The judge is buried in a town that bears his own name. This Aijalon is in Zebulun, not the Aijalon of the valley in Dan.

Abdon means “servant”, and his father’s name, Hillel, “praise”, was later borne by the famous rabbi of the first century BC. Another man of Pirathon, Benaiah, was one of David’s mighty men (2 Samuel 23:30).

“Nephews” in 1611 English meant grandsons, from the Latin nepos; the Hebrew is literally “sons of sons”. Forty sons and thirty grandsons on seventy colts is a picture of a large and wealthy household, the kind that rode rather than walked.

Pirathon is usually placed at Farata, west of Shechem. Centuries later the Syrian general Bacchides fortified a town called Pharathon (1 Maccabees 9:50). Abdon is the last minor judge; the next verse begins forty years under the Philistines.