Why is "Shibboleth" depicted as an ear of corn near to a fall of water?

 

Baal, god of rain, thunder and fertility among Babylonians, Chaldeans, Carthaginians, Phoenicians, Philistines, and Sidonians.

In the ritual of the Fellocraft degree we find that, from the middle of the eighteenth century, two distinctive legends appear: on the one hand, that of Joshua commanding the sun to stand still in order to defeat the Amorites, and on the other that of Jephthah defeating the Gileadites and slaughtering them at the fords of the Jordan, as they were recognised by their pronunciation of the word Shibboleth.

The common denominator of these two legends is that in them the worshippers of Jehovah defeat the worshippers of pagan gods.

In the case of Joshua, he defeats an alliance of five Amorite kings, who are probably a transcript of a pentad of gods very popular among polytheistic Jews. The most popular example in this regard is Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman in John 4:5-43, for when Jesus says to her "You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband" what the evangelist is really saying is "you Samaritans used to worship five false gods, and now that you seem to worship the Lord, you do not worship him sincerely".

In Jephthah's case, he will defeat both Ammonites and Gileadites, both Baal-worshipping peoples.

The question that remains to be determined is whether the appearance of these two legends in Masonic ritual, proclaiming the defeat of the false gods before the worshippers of the true God, is intended to embody the struggle between good and evil, or whether the ritual is clearly opposing to the latitudinarian spirit of religion that pervaded the Freemasonry of the Moderns, and which had been argued in Masonry Dissected through the innovative symbolic figure of the Valley of Jehoshaphat. However, this is a complex issue and will be dealt with in a future entry.

On this occasion we are going to look at different issue: the phrase in the Emulation Ritual which reads:

Shibboleth denotes plenty and is usually depicted in our Lodges by an ear of corn near to a fall of water.

The association of corn and water with abundance is obvious in an agricultural society. However, in this case the image of the ear of corn and the fall of water has a deeper background, related to the legend of Jephthah that appears in the ritual.

In Hebrew, Shibboleth means "ear of corn". But why do we depict it as an ear of corn near to a fall of water in our Tracing Boards?

The prophet Elijah, by José de Ribera (1638).

In order to understand the meaning of the ear of corn and the fall of water, we have to look to the Bible. Although other biblical passages might help us, we will focus on 1 Kings 17 to 19, where we are described the spectacular theological battle that, around 860 BC, Elijah fought against 450 prophets of Baal.

In an agricultural society, the greatest god is the one who can guarantee rain and crops. This is why Baal, the god of rain and fertility, enjoyed so much devotion in Asia Minor in general, and in the city of Gilead in particular.

But in this city where Baal was worshipped, there lived a man, Elijah the Tishbite, who believed that Baal was a false god, and that the only true God was Jehovah. Elijah was neither a hero nor a saint; he was "a man subject to passions", but he nevertheless chose to oppose the worship of Baal.

As we read in 1 Kings 17:1, the first thing Elijah does is to attack the essence of Baal worship, and he does something that is a real declaration of war in that context:

Now Elijah the Tishbite, from Tishbe in Gilead, said to Ahab, “As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, whom I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word”.

In making this statement Elijah denies Baal the power to generate rain, and leaves that power solely in the hands of Jehovah.

From here on the theme of who is able to provide water and food will recur. Jehovah tells Elijah to go to the brook Cherith, where the ravens will feed him. But eventually the brook also dries up. Then, in 1 Kings 17:7, Jehovah directs Elijah to go to Zarephath of Sidon, where a widow will feed him. We return again to the theme of corn and water, as Elijah tells the widow:

1 Kings 17:10. He called to her and asked, “Would you bring me a little water in a jar so I may have a drink?”

1 Kings 17:11. As she was going to get it, he called, “And bring me, please, a piece of bread”.

To the woman's complaint that she has no flour to make it, Elias replies:

1 Kings 17:13. Don’t be afraid. Go home and do as you have said. But first make a small loaf of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me, and then make something for yourself and your son. For this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the Lord sends rain on the land’.

In other words, Elijah insists that it is Jehovah, and not Baal, who provides.

Elijah's offering, soaked in water, burns at Jehovah's desire, while the offering of the Baal worshippers fails to burn.

1 Kings later describes Elijah's spectacular duel with the 450 priests of Baal. Elijah has Ahab assemble 450 prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. There he invites these pagan priests to get their deity to light the wood on an altar, but they fail. Elijah, however, has them prepare a similar altar, dips the wood three times, and succeeds in getting Jehovah to light it. By this he makes a fool of the professed worshippers of Baal. As Old Testament literary usage dictates, any theological conflict can only end with the slaughter of the worshippers of the false gods, so, quite canonically, the 450 prophets are slaughtered by the mob. The drought ceased, but Elijah had to flee to avoid Jezebel's vengeance. The flight, however, would turn out to be a blessing, for because of it the prophet would enjoy the vision of the one God whom he served with persevering faithfulness.

The presence of Baal in the Old Testament is not limited to the Elijah story alone. In Hosea 2:7, the Israelites say:

I will go after my lovers (baals), who give me my food and my water, my wool and my linen, my olive oil and my drink.

This phrase is very important because it shows us that Baal worship was also present in Israel. Also the epic poem of Aqatu and the Ugaritic Baal Cycle highlight the power of Baal to provide water and corn.

Jephthah confronts the Ammonites.

Let us now go back some 350 years in time. In the Masonic ritual we find the narrative of Jephthah's campaign as it appears in the Book of Judges. Here the Gileadites are the worshippers of Jehovah, while the Ephraimites worship Baal. Evidently the faith of the Gileadites evolved during the long period of time elapsed between the Book of Judges and the latter part of the Book of Kings, for in 1 Kings 17 the Gileadites already worship Baal, while in Judges they still worship Jehova.

Any Mason knows in outline the events following the defeat of the Ephraimites, their attempt to escape across the fords of the Jordan and the ordeal of pronouncing "Shibboleth" in order to get through, costing the lives of many because of their peculiar pronunciation.

What is less important is the ritual's explanation of the hostility of the Ephraimites to the Gileadites for not being able to share the spoils of victory over the Ammonites (who also worshipped Baal - Jephthah defeats twice the worshippers of Baal). The real bone of contention is that, at this time, the Gileadites worshipped Jehovah, while the Ephraimites, as well as the Ammonites, worshipped Baal.

The reason why the ear of corn and the fall of water appear on the Second Degree Tracing Board is because they represent the point of conflict where Jehovah and Baal disputed their hegemony, just as they indicate the content of Jehovah's victory: it is Jehovah, and not the false god Baal, who provides water and corn, food and fertility. The question remains whether this diatribe is to be interpreted as the struggle between good and evil, or whether the figure of Jephthah, like that of Joshua, was introduced as a way of rejecting the latitudinarian character of Anderson's Constitutions of 1723. Personally I think it is the latter, although from a theological perspective the two issues are in fact one and the same.

 

Baal stele at Ugarit (Syria).