What is obvious from the text is that an Ephraimite could not pronounce the word Shibboleth
with the same accent as a Gileadite, and was thus discovered and immediately slaughtered. What is much more difficult to determine is what the problem in pronunciation really was. Two main possibilities exist. First, there is the camp that says this is probably a case of divergent development of sibilants in Gileadite and Ephraimite dialects in the eleventh century BC. The Proto-Semitic spelling of the word started with a t or s or sh, and the pronunciation of that letter either changed or remained the same in Ephraimite, with the Gileadite spelling either remaining or changing, as the case may have been.1 The alternative position is that this problem in pronunciation was on account of a differentiation in the pronunciation of the same sibilant in Ephraim and Gilead. It thus could have been that the Gileadites pronounced sh
as th,
a sound that was unknown to the Ephraimites, who instead pronounced it as s.
So, shibboleth
was pronounced thibboleth
by the Gileadites and sibboleth
by the Ephraimites.2
The latter position seems more likely in the end, but we cannot be certain either way.
6 they said to him, “Then say Shibboleth,” and he said, “Sibboleth,” for he could not pronounce it right. Then they seized him and slaughtered him at the fords of the Jordan. At that time 42,000 of the Ephraimites fell.