It's All In How You Say It

In reading through Judges, a particular passage stood out to me this morning. In Judges 12:5-6, we read: Jephthah captured the shallow crossings of the Jordan River, and whenever a fugitive from Ephraim tried to go back across, the men of Gilead would challenge him. “Are you a member of the tribe of Ephraim?” they would ask. If the man said, “No, I’m not,” 6 they would tell him to say “Shibboleth.” If he was from Ephraim, he would say “Sibboleth,” because people from Ephraim cannot pronounce the word correctly. Then they would take him and kill him at the shallow crossings of the Jordan. In all, 42,000 Ephraimites were killed at that time. (NLT) Jephthah, the judge of Israel, was able to distinguish his people from outsiders simply by the way they spoke. I can’t help but wonder if there is some application in this passage for us today. What does the way we talk say about us? Who does our language say we belong to?