In Judges 12, Jephthah and the men of Gilead fight Ephraim.
The Gileadites capture the fords as a result of this battle, and interrogate any Ephraimites who attempt to cross over with a single command: “Say shibboleth.”
Apparently the ability to pronounce the word ‘correctly’—undoubtedly some quirk in speech or dialect that led the Ephraimites to say sibboleth instead—could accurately identify origin. Those who could not pronounce the word correctly were killed at the fords: some 42,000 Ephraimites in number.
Since then, a shibboleth has become a broader term for an in-group identifier: something that marks people as “one of us” or “one of them.” Perhaps you’ve come across a very common version of this with local place names. In a lot of areas, place names aren’t always pronounced the way they appear in writing—think something like Lancaster (which can be pronounced LANK-uh-ster or lan-CASS-ter). Saying a name correctly, or not, can be an indicator of how native you are to a particular area (or at least of how native you sound).
And, as in Scripture, an incorrect shibboleth can result in ostracization or punishment. You’re not likely to be murdered at the fords for pronouncing a place name wrong, but it might mark you as an outcast or an outsider. And in many ways, identifiers we bear—the TV shows we watch or the news we prefer, the figures we hold up as role models, the clothes we wear or vocabulary we have—can speak to affinity in a certain group or against it.
This has, for Christians, become more complicated than it ever had a right to be.
For some now, being “Christian” means holding a certain set of political positions; admiring a certain set of people; saying a certain set of things. A Christian shibboleth might now, inexplicably, be an American flag, or the Bible study author you follow, or what you say you believe about guns.
Back at a church I attended years ago, a young man in my Sunday School made a casual remark: “Well we know they’re Christians if they’re Republicans! And we know they’re godless if they’re Democrats.” Even at the time, long before our current political situation, I found the comment bewildering. I knew Republicans who were atheists; I knew Democrats who were Christians; I knew believers across the spectrum of political belief. I found it strange, then as now, that political identity would be used as a shibboleth to identify “true believers.”
And yet here we are.
The truth is, the shibboleth is Christ Himself. To be a Christian, the key and critical and sole mark of identity is to recognize Christ as Lord and to follow Him. It is simple—it is so very simple, in principle. But what strikes me is how hard it has become in practice.
We want to be able to judge people easily. We want to gatekeep. We want to know who “our people” are. We want the comfort of sorting the world into neat boxes of “belongs with us” and “doesn’t belong with us.” But that isn’t how life works. We can judge people by their fruit and approach them accordingly, sure, but that’s hardly the standard I see at play these days: to be Christian, it seems, can be a ritual display of political beliefs, celebration of public figures, and icons.
It is not lost on me that the incorrect shibboleth in Scripture results in death. That’s a sobering realization: the lost of 42,000 lives is not something to be taken lightly. But Christ as a shibboleth means life. His love is perpetual and eternal; He seeks out the ninety-and nine; He waits and endures patiently for the lost.
More importantly, when we look to Christ, we understand something of how we should approach our engagement with others—in humility, with compassion, and in great forgiveness. Jesus does not stand at the fords to kill those who attempt to cross over. He dies and is raised so that His death can serve as an affordance for those who wish to cross over from death to life.
Other symbols remain irrelevant, and our dependence on using them as a shibboleth says more about us than anything. Christ remains the key. It is to our peril to forget it.
Samaritan's Song 