Judges 12

I'm not a super-voracious comic book reader, but I have read a few that I enjoy. One of my favorites is The Ultimates, a kind of rebooted take on the Avengers written by Mark Millar (scribe of Secret Service, made into the movie Kingsman: The Secret Service, and Kick-Ass, made into guess-what-movie) and penciled by Bryan Hitch. In the first of the two volumes, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch are a peripheral presence throughout, not doing much and only appearing after the big final battle to essentially say, "Phew! Wasn't that hard work? But we saved the world!" (For those of you not in the know, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch are Magneto's kids, and if that makes matters even more confusing for you, congratulations! It means that you aren't a comic book nerd.)

I feel that the Ephraimites have a similar attitude as Pietro and Wanda Maximoff, but even more caustic. If you remember back in chapter 8, these same Ephraimites complained to Gideon that he didn't allow them to come along and fight in the confrontation with the Midianties. Gideon was able to mollify the querulous lot, but Jephthah has to deal with outright lies this time. Jephthah actually had asked for the Ephraimites' help, but they had refused. Of course, only after Jephthah vanquishes the Ammonites do the Ephraimites turn around and say they could have helped. I'm going to take a wild guess and say that the Ephraimites only said this because they coveted the glory that comes from victory.

I can't think of a whole lot of situations when I wanted approbation for something I could have done but didn't. (And I've definitely never wanted to burn down someone's house over their head, as verse 1 puts it.) However, I feel that I neglect God's guidance more than I should--and of course, I do regret it when I realize how much easier it would have been had I just listened to what the Creator of the universe told me.

After the Gileadites soundly beat the Ephraimites, they devise a rather brutal pronunciation test--using the word "Shibboleth"--to determine whether someone is an Ephraimite and thus worthy of slaughter "at the fords of the Jordan" (verse 6). During World War II, some American soldiers did something similar with the Japanese, who couldn't pronounce "lollapalooza" (they pronounced it like "roraparooza"). I myself would never pass in a Spanish-speaking country because I just cannot roll the letter "r." If my survival depended on performing an alveolar trill, I'd be quite dead.