6. shibboleth … sibboleth. The test does not turn upon the meaning of
the word, which may be either “ear of corn” (Gen 41:5–7; Ruth 2:2) or “flood,
torrent” (Ps 69:3, 16; Isa 27:12). The latter is more appropriate to the
occasion, but both may have a common etymological origin, as pointed out by
Speiser, Oriental and Biblical Studies:
Collected Writings of E. A. Speiser, eds. J. J. Finklestein and Moshe
Greenberg (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1967), pp. 143–50. Speiser argues
that the merging of the spirant ṯ (tha) and the sibilant š (sha),
attested for Phoenicia as early as the eleventh century, must have occurred at
about the same time in western Palestine. There was, however, a lag in
Transjordan; the merging of these vocables is incomplete in Arabic even today.
Analogous spelling practice is well-known from Old Akkadian, Nuzi, and Amarna;
“where a distinction between original ṯ
and š is maintained orthographically,
it is the spirant that is written invariably as š, whereas the sibilant may appear either as š or sʾ’ (Speiser, p. 149
and note). Speiser concludes, “In short, ṯ
had to be written š. It could not be
set down as s unless such a writing
was meant to express an unsuccessful imitation of the required sound, which is
exactly what happened.” There remains only to point out that the distinction
between the letters shin and sin would not be clear prior to the
invention of pointing systems. And this explains why the Ephraimite
pronounciation is unambiguously represented by the letter samek. (Robert G. Boling, Judges: Introduction, Translation,
and Commentary [Anchor Yale Bible 6A; New Haven: Yale University Press,
2008], 212-13)
The following is a scan of:
E. A.
Speiser, "The Shibboleth Incident (Judges 12:6) (1942)," in Oriental
and Biblical Studies: Collected Writings of E. A. Speiser, ed. J. J.
Finkelstein and Moshe Greenberg (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1967),
