Not all unrighteousness has an outward appearance of sinfulness. Ephraim, in these few verses, provide several examples of this type of behavior and attitude.

Manasseh and Ephraim were the two sons of Joseph that went on to become recognized as individual tribes of Israel. Gilead was a town in the middle of the land possessed by these two tribes. The people of Gilead were so independent and self-sufficient that in many of the early writings about Israel, Gilead was treated almost as a separate tribal entity. The rest of the people from the Manasseh and Ephraim tribal area looked down upon the people of Gilead and considered them inferior.

After Jephthah won his victory against the Ammonites, the men of Ephraim saw this is an opportunity to put the people of Gilead back in their place. We do not know for sure, but they may have been thinking that the men of Gilead would be weakened by the war with the Ammonites. They gathered their forces and crossed the Jordan River planning to burn Jephthah’s house down over his head. Jephthah offered them a chance to back down, but instead they insulted all Gileadites by calling them renegades from Ephraim and Manasseh.

Jephthah and his army turned their high class way of speaking against them and used it to kill almost all of their standing army.

Ephraim demonstrates the sin of arrogance. Their large army which hadn’t fought in years was defeated easily by a much smaller force that they had treated with disdain. This illustrates the sinfulness of having fragile feelings. Righteous people are not easily offended, and they most definitely do not go looking for offense. They demonstrated the sinfulness of rudeness, yes I said it, righteous people are not deliberately rude. Their leadership was both foolish and stupid; I’m not going to say that is sin, but I am going to say that it’s unrighteous to deliberately refuse sound advice. We are not called to be like Ephraim; in this story they were only good as a bad example.