Hebrew word · H5451
סִבֹּלֶת
sibolet
ear
This spelling occurs only here in the Hebrew Bible. It is the same word as šibbōlet, written with samekh (s) instead of shin (sh) to show how an Ephraimite said it.
Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament. ·
What it means
stream (as pronounced by Ephraimites)
§ 1) an ear of grain or wheat
Abridged from Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).
In depth
- Range of meaning
This spelling occurs only here in the Hebrew Bible. It is the same word as šibbōlet, written with samekh (s) instead of shin (sh) to show how an Ephraimite said it.
- Against the English
'Sibboleth' in English correctly shows the change in the first sound. Readers may not realise that the Hebrew writer had only a limited set of letters and could only approximate whatever sound the Ephraimites actually made.
- Used elsewhere in the period
Its uniqueness is the point. The writer coined the spelling to put an accent on the page. Inscriptions from the period (for example the Samaria ostraca, which give the northern form 'year' as št where Judah wrote šnh) confirm that northern and southern Hebrew differed in pronunciation and word forms, though they do not settle this exact sound.
Where it appears
Judges · 1
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Judges 12:6 סִבֹּ֗לֶת Sibboleth
they told him, “Please say Shibboleth.” If he said, “Sibboleth,” because he could not pronounce it correctly, they seized him and killed him at the fords of the Jordan. So at that time 42,000 Ephraimites were killed.
Here: The same word in Ephraimite speech, written with an 's' letter (samekh) instead of 'sh' (shin). It is not a separate word. It is the giveaway accent, spelled out on the page.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.