Speech Lessons May Save Your Life
SPEECH LESSONS MAY
SAVE YOUR LIFE
It
would never have happened if his mother had not been from Tekoa.
Dannah
had married Eltekeh’s father when very young and loved the life of a shepherd’s
wife. But that didn’t keep her from
wanting something better for her son.
“Eltekeh,
you could really be someone great in Israel.”
He had her words memorized he had heard them so often. “All you need is more education. Anyone
can be a judge if God calls him, but you have to be able to talk right.”
His
mother didn’t think that anyone in the city of Shiloh where they lived talked
right. The only Israelites who talked
correctly came from her home town, Tekoa..
The
sheep had wandered close to the ravine again and Eltekeh picked up some more
stones to warn them away. His father
would be mad if he lost a lamb just because he hadn’t paid attention.
“Get
away from there you s’eep. Get back
where you belong.”
The
rock did a better job than his shout and the flock moved back toward safety so
Eltekeh returned to his thoughts. He had
already completed school, but Mother wanted him to take another class, a speech
class.
“Eltekeh,”
she would say. “What if you move back to
my hometown of Tekoa? They would laugh at you if you weren’t able to speak
correctly.”
Eltekeh
had no intention of ever moving to Tekoa, but he couldn’t say that to his mother. To her Tekoa was like Jerusalem, beautiful
for situation, the joy of the whole world.
A
lamb gamboling off toward the ridge caught Eltekeh’s attention. “You stupid s’eep. Get away from there.”
Sometimes
he thought he was just like the sheep he watched. His mother was the shepherd and he had no
chance of escaping from her watchful eye.
He would just have to take the class and make the best of it. But he wasn’t about to talk like a silly
Tekoaite around his friends.
It
was his mother’s fault that Eltekeh struggled out of bed before sunrise the
next week and trudged through the village to the house of Ben-ami. His teacher did not come from the tribe of
Ephraim like all the other residents of Shiloh.
He came from Gad, east of the Jordan River. He lived in Shiloh because the Ammonites had
raided his village and killed his family while he worked out in the field. He considered Shiloh a place of exile. But he talked like the people of Tekoa and
that was enough for Dannah.
“Today
we are going to work on our sibilants,” the teacher handed him a clay shard
with the words which brought dread into his very soul. All of them started with the same
letters. “Sh.”
“S’ip,”
read Eltekeh.
“And
what does a s’ip do?”
“A
s’ip sails on the sea.”
“No. that’s a ship. A ship sails on the sea. You sip a drink of water, but a ship sails on
the sea.”
“But,
that’s what I said.”
“Well,
say it then.”
“A
s’ip sails on the sea.”
“No,
no. A ship. A ship.
Sh, sh, sh, sh, ship.”
Eltekeh
watched his teacher’s lips and tried his best to imitate the sound. “Ssssssss’ip.”
“All
right. Next word.”
Eltekeh
took a deep breath. “S’epherd.”
“Use
it in a sentence.”
“The
s’epherd was watching his s’eep.”
“The
shepherd was watching his sheep.”
“But
that’s what I said.”
“No. You said the s’epherd was watching his
s’eep.”
“Can
we work on something else for awhile?”
“Not
until you learn how to say your ‘sh’.
Now, try the next word.”
Eltekeh
groaned as he looked again at the list.
What a waste of time. He would
never talk that way. The guys would roll
on the ground laughing if he said “Shiloh,” instead of “S’iloh.”
For
the next hour Eltekeh tried desperately to form his s’ips into ships, his
s’epherds into shepherds and his s’ores into shores. He could say the “sh” sound alone, like he
was telling someone to be quiet. But in
a word—impossible.
“That’s
all,” Ben-ami finally stood and looked out the door. “Take the list and work on
it until next time.”
It
took three months but Ben-ami refused to give in to Eltekeh’s
stubbornness. On the day he could
correctly pronounce the sentence, “The shepherd of the sheep shot the she-wolf
on the shore near Shiloh,” Ben-ami announced that the class was over. He gave a glowing report to Dannah and
Eltekeh quoted the same sentence for her, but none of his friends ever heard
him say anything except “S’iloh” when they were nearby.
When
he fell in love with a girl named Sharona he wooed his like any good Shilohite,
telling her that the s’ape of his heart was such that he wanted to s’are his
very life with her in order to s’ow her how much he loved her. Being from Shiloh she understood perfectly.
One
day word arrived in Shiloh that a man named Jair had become judge in the land
of Gilead. All of Ephraim rejoiced to
hear that a strong judge stood between them and the Ammonites. Eltekeh had his own herd by then and didn’t
want any Ammonites stopping in for free mutton.
For the next twenty-two years Jair provided a buffer zone of safety, and
then he died. Small bands of Ammonites were
spotted in the hills and Eltekeh began to lose a sheep now and then. For the first time since he was just a boy he
remembered his mother’s prediction that anyone could become a judge if God
called him. His own opinion argued that
anyone could be a judge if he grew angry enough.
The
third year after Jair died the entire army of Ammon crossed the Jordan. 50,000 men and no provisions. Satisfying hungry soldiers meant slaughtering
the nearest flocks and harvesting the nearest fields. Eltekeh watched in frustrated silence as the
Ammonites killed seven hundred of his best sheep to provide a meal for their
army.
Soon
after the invasion word arrived in Shiloh that a new judge named Jephthah had
arisen in Gilead. Eltekeh breathed a
private sigh of relief since he really hadn’t felt any desperate urge to pursue
the office himself. If Jephthah wanted
the job, Jephthah could have the job.
With
Jephthah raising an army in Gilead, however, some of the men began encouraging
recruitment in Ephraim. They wanted
their own revenge for the destruction of their land in the Ammonite
invasion. Posters appeared on the city
gates and war fever raged. Eltekeh
signed up in anger over the loss of his sheep.
The
new recruits soon numbered 42,000 and a messenger traveled to Jephthah to
inform him that the Ephraimite Regulars stood ready to help. The men marched in parades, practiced
sword-fighting, engaged in archery contests, sat around, ate tons of potatoes
and waited for their orders from Jephthah.
But the call never came. Finally,
a messenger from across the Jordan appeared in the city gate.
“Jephthah
has won a great victory,” he shouted.
“An army from Reuben, Gad and Manasseh pursued the king of Ammon into
his own territory, decimating his troops.
Praise Jehovah for the great victory of Jephthah over the enemies of the
people of God.”
Eltekeh
and his friends didn’t feel like praising Jehovah. They had been looking forward to sinking
their teeth into some tender Ammonite sheep.
They wanted revenge and not just victory.
“Let’s
go get Jephthah,” shouted a voice in the crowd.
“Right! Let’s teach him a lesson for slighting us
when he went into battle. He can’t push
the S’iloh Regulars around like that.”
Not
everyone was that anxious to fight, but mob fever kicked in and before
nightfall the entire army of Ephraim had crossed over the Jordan River to take
on Jephthah and the Gileadites.
The
army of Gilead included only a few more men than the Ephraim Regulars, but they
definitely had more experience. As soon
as the battle began it became obvious that the raw recruits were sadly inferior
to the seasoned warriors from Gilead. A
mass, unorganized retreat headed for the ford across the Jordan River back to
their own tribal area. Many of the men
of Ephraim died during the headlong retreat but those who reached the river
faced another dilemma entirely. Cavalry
from the army of Gilead flanked them and waited at the ford. Their only hope lay in abandoning their
weapons and pretending to be travelers from Reuben, Gad and Manasseh going to
visit friends across the Jordan.
That
might have worked except for one problem, the men of Ephraim couldn’t talk
right. The men who guarded the passages asked
each of those seeking to cross the river to say “Shibboleth,” the word for the
flood stage of the Jordan.
“S’ibboleth,”
the Ephraimite men would say and a sword would whistle through the air, ending
their ability to say anything at all.
Finally,
it came time for Eltekeh to make the crossing.
“All
right, Ephraimite scum,” scowled a Gileadite soldier. “Say Shibboleth.”
Eltekeh
paused, his mind rushing back to those early morning lessons from Ben-ami. “The shepherd of the sheep shot the she-wolf
on the shore near Shiloh,” raced through his mind. “The shepherd of the sheep shot the she-wolf
on the shore near Shiloh.”
The
guard raised the bloody sword, ready to separate another Ephraimite head from
its torso.
“Shibboleth,”
whispered Eltekeh. Then louder,
“Shibboleth! Shibboleth.”
The
sword started its downward path and then hesitated. “What did you say?”
“Shibboleth,”
Eltekeh shouted. “I said Shibboleth.”
Forty-two
thousand Ephraimites died at the hands of the men of Jephthah that day. But one survived. Speech lessons saved his life.
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