THE CODE WORD
Written by U.S Immigration News Saturday, 05 May 2012 22:34
For generations, nations, organizations, families and individuals have been using ‘codeword’, ‘test word’ or ‘password’ in order to gain access to a need or claim membership of some sort. This is also true of the Bible age. To the Gileadites as we read in Judges 12:1-6, the word “Shibboleth” is a codeword that was used in order to differentiate between an Ephraimite and a Gileadite. In this war-time story, it is clearly shown that anyone who claimed to be a Gileadite but could not pronounce the word ‘Shibboleth’ correctly (with its H sound) was definitely not a Gileadite and was therefore killed.
A colleague of mine in year 2005, Pastor Justus Orori, was teaching in one of his sermons about what is in a name. As he spoke I recalled my...