Judges 12:1-6

Civil Strife Mars the Victory

12:1 The Ephraimites assembled ¹  and crossed over to Zaphon. They said to Jephthah, “Why did you go and fight ²  with the Ammonites without asking ³  us to go with you? We will burn your house down right over you!” ⁴ 

12:2 Jephthah said to them, “My people and I were entangled in controversy with the Ammonites. ⁵  I asked for your help, but you did not deliver me from their power. ⁶  12:3 When I saw that you were not going to help, ⁷  I risked my life ⁸  and advanced against ⁹  the Ammonites, and the Lord handed them over to me. Why have you come up ¹⁰  to fight with me today?” 12:4 Jephthah assembled all the men of Gilead and they fought with Ephraim. The men of Gilead defeated Ephraim, because the Ephraimites insulted them, saying, ¹¹  “You Gileadites are refugees in Ephraim, living within Ephraim’s and Manasseh’s territory.” ¹²  12:5 The Gileadites captured the fords of the Jordan River ¹³  opposite Ephraim. ¹⁴  Whenever an Ephraimite fugitive ¹⁵  said, “Let me cross over,” the men of Gilead asked ¹⁶  him, “Are you an Ephraimite?” If he said, “No,” 12:6 then they said to him, “Say ‘Shibboleth!’” ¹⁷  If he said, “Sibboleth” (and could not pronounce the word ¹⁸  correctly), they grabbed him and executed him right there at the fords of the Jordan. On that day forty-two thousand Ephraimites fell dead.

Judges 12:2

12:2 Jephthah said to them, “My people and I were entangled in controversy with the Ammonites. ¹⁹  I asked for your help, but you did not deliver me from their power. ²⁰ 

Judges 19:1

Sodom and Gomorrah Revisited

19:1 In those days Israel had no king. There was a Levite ²¹  living temporarily in the remote region of the Ephraimite hill country. He acquired a concubine ²²  from Bethlehem ²³  in Judah.

Job 5:2

5:2 For ²⁴  wrath kills the foolish person, ²⁵ 

and anger ²⁶  slays the silly one.

Ecclesiastes 4:4

Labor Motivated by Envy

4:4 Then I considered ²⁷  all the skillful work ²⁸  that is done:

Surely it is nothing more than ²⁹  competition ³⁰  between one person and another. ³¹ 

This also is profitless – like ³²  chasing the wind.

James 4:5-6

4:5 Or do you think the scripture means nothing when it says, ³³  “The spirit that God ³⁴  caused ³⁵  to live within us has an envious yearning”? ³⁶  4:6 But he gives greater grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but he gives grace to the humble.” ³⁷ 

[12:1]  ¹ tn Heb “the men of Ephraim were summoned [or “were mustered”].”

[12:1]  ² tn Heb “cross over to fight.”

[12:1]  ³ tn Or “calling”; or “summoning.”

[12:1]  ⁴ tn Heb “Your house we will burn over you with fire.”

[12:2]  ⁵ tn Heb A man of great strife I was and my people and the Ammonites.”

[12:2]  ⁶ tn Heb “hand.”

[12:3]  ⁷ tn Heb “you were no deliverer.” Codex Alexandrinus (A) of the LXX has “no one was helping.”

[12:3]  ⁸ tn Heb “I put my life in my hand.”

[12:3]  ⁹ tn Heb “crossed over to.”

[12:3]  ¹⁰ tn The Hebrew adds “against me” here. This is redundant in English and has not been included in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[12:4]  ¹¹ tn Heb “because they said.”

[12:4]  ¹² tc Heb “Refugees of Ephraim are you, O Gilead, in the midst of Ephraim and in the midst of Manasseh.” The LXX omits the entire second half of the verse (beginning with “because”). The words כִּי אָמְרוּ פְּלִיטֵי אֶפְרַיִם (ki ’amru pÿlitey ’efrayim, “because they said, ‘Refugees of Ephraim’”) may have been accidentally copied from the next verse (cf. כִּי יֹאמְרוּ פְּלִיטֵי אֶפְרַיִם, ki yo’mÿru pelitey ’efrayim) and the following words (“you, O Gilead…Manasseh”) then added in an attempt to make sense of the verse. See G. F. Moore, Judges (ICC), 307-8, and C. F. Burney, Judges, 327. If the Hebrew text is retained, then the Ephraimites appear to be insulting the Gileadites by describing them as refugees who are squatting on Ephraim’s and Manasseh’s land. The present translation assumes that “Ephraim” is a genitive of location after “refugees.”

[12:5]  ¹³ tn The word “River” is not in the Hebrew text, but is supplied in the translation for clarification.

[12:5]  ¹⁴ tn Or “against Ephraim,” that is, so as to prevent Ephraim from crossing.

[12:5]  ¹⁵ tn The Hebrew text has a plural form here.

[12:5]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “say to.”

[12:6]  ¹⁷ sn The inability of the Ephraimites to pronounce the word shibboleth the way the Gileadites did served as an identifying test. It illustrates that during this period there were differences in pronunciation between the tribes. The Hebrew word shibboleth itself means “stream” or “flood,” and was apparently chosen simply as a test case without regard to its meaning.

[12:6]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “and could not prepare to speak.” The precise meaning of יָכִין (yakhin) is unclear. Some understand it to mean “was not careful [to say it correctly]”; others emend to יָכֹל (yakhol, “was not able [to say it correctly]”) or יָבִין (yavin, “did not understand [that he should say it correctly]”), which is read by a few Hebrew mss.

[12:2]  ¹⁹ tn Heb A man of great strife I was and my people and the Ammonites.”

[12:2]  ²⁰ tn Heb “hand.”

[19:1]  ²¹ tn Heb “a man, a Levite.”

[19:1]  ²² sn See the note on the word “concubine” in 8:31.

[19:1]  ²³ map For location see Map5 B1; Map7 E2; Map8 E2; Map10 B4.

[5:2]  ²⁴ tn One of the reasons that commentators transpose v. 1 is that the כִּי (ki, “for”) here seems to follow 4:21 better. If people die without wisdom, it is folly that kills them. But the verse also makes sense after 5:1. He is saying that complaining against God will not bring deliverance (v. 1), but rather, by such impatience the fool will bring greater calamity on himself.

[5:2]  ²⁵ tn The two words for “foolish person” are common in wisdom literature. The first, אֱוִיל (’evil), is the fool who is a senseless person; the פֹּתֶה (poteh) is the naive and silly person, the simpleton, the one who is easily led astray. The direct object is introduced with the preposition ל (lamed) in this verse (see GKC 366 §117.n).

[5:2]  ²⁶ tn The two parallel nouns are similar; their related verbs are also paralleled in Deut 32:16 with the idea of “vex” and “irritate.” The first word כַּעַשׂ (ka’as) refers to the inner irritation and anger one feels, whereas the second word קִנְאָה (qin’ah) refers to the outward expression of the anger. In Job 6:2, Job will respond “O that my impatience [ka’as] were weighed….”

[4:4]  ²⁷ tn Heb “saw.”

[4:4]  ²⁸ tn Heb “all the toil and all the skill.” This Hebrew clause (אֶת־כָּל־עָמָל וְאֵת כָּל־כִּשְׁרוֹן, ’et-kol-’amal vÿ’et kol-kishron) is a nominal hendiadys (a figurative expression in which two independent phrases are used to connote the same thing). The second functions adverbially, modifying the first, which retains its full nominal function: “all the skillful work.”

[4:4]  ²⁹ tn The phrase “nothing more than” does not appear in the Hebrew text, but is supplied in the translation for clarity.

[4:4]  ³⁰ tn The noun קִנְאַה (qin’ah, “competition”) has a wide range of meanings: “zeal; jealousy; envy; rivalry; competition; suffering; animosity; anger; wrath” (HALOT 1110 s.v.; BDB 888 s.v.). Here, as in 9:6, it denotes “rivalry” (BDB 888 s.v. 1) or “competitive spirit” (HALOT 1110 s.v. 1.b). The LXX rendered it ζῆλος (zhlos, “envy; jealousy”). The English versions reflect this broad range: “rivalry” (NEB, NAB, NASB), “envy” (KJV, ASV, RSV, NRSV, MLB, NIV, NJPS), and “jealousy” (Moffatt).

[4:4]  ³¹ tn Heb “a man and his neighbor.”

[4:4]  ³² tn The word “like” does not appear in the Hebrew text, but is supplied in the translation for clarity.

[4:5]  ³³ tn Grk “vainly says.”

[4:5]  ³⁴ tn Grk “he”; the referent (God) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[4:5]  ³⁵ tc The Byzantine text and a few other mss (P 33 Ï) have the intransitive κατῴκησεν (katwkhsen) here, which turns τὸ πνεῦμα (to pneuma) into the subject of the verb: “The spirit which lives within us.” But the more reliable and older witnesses (Ì⁷⁴ א B Ψ 049 1241 1739 al) have the causative verb, κατῴκισεν (katwkisen), which implies a different subject and τὸ πνεῦμα as the object: “The spirit that he causes to live within us.” Both because of the absence of an explicit subject and the relative scarcity of the causative κατοικίζω (katoikizw, “cause to dwell”) compared to the intransitive κατοικέω (katoikew, “live, dwell”) in biblical Greek (κατοικίζω does not occur in the NT at all, and occurs one twelfth as frequently as κατοικέω in the LXX), it is easy to see why scribes would replace κατῴκισεν with κατῴκησεν. Thus, on internal and external grounds, κατῴκισεν is the preferred reading.

[4:5]  ³⁶ tn Interpreters debate the referent of the word “spirit” in this verse: (1) The translation takes “spirit” to be the lustful capacity within people that produces a divided mind (1:8, 14) and inward conflicts regarding God (4:1-4). God has allowed it to be in man since the fall, and he provides his grace (v. 6) and the new birth through the gospel message (1:18-25) to counteract its evil effects. (2) On the other hand the word “spirit” may be taken positively as the Holy Spirit and the sense would be, “God yearns jealously for the Spirit he caused to live within us.” But the word for “envious” or “jealous” is generally negative in biblical usage and the context before and after seems to favor the negative interpretation.

[4:6]  ³⁷ sn A quotation from Prov 3:34.