JEOPARDY, a term meaning risk or danger of death, loss or other injury. The word, in Mid. Eng. juparti, jeupartie, &c., was adapted from O. Fr. ju, later jeu, and parti, even game, in medieval Latin jocus partitus. This term was originally used of a problem in chess or of a stage in any other game at which the chances of success or failure are evenly divided between the players. It was thus early transformed to any state of uncertainty.
JEPHSON, ROBERT (1736-1803), British dramatist, was born in Ireland. After serving for some years in the British army, he retired with the rank of captain, and lived in England, where he was the friend of Garrick, Reynolds, Goldsmith, Johnson, Burke, Burney and Charles Townshend. His appointment as master of the horse to the lord-lieutenant of Ireland took him back to Dublin. He published, in the Mercury newspaper a series of articles in defence of the lord-lieutenant’s administration which were afterwards collected and issued in book form under the title of The Bachelor, or Speculations of Jeoffry Wagstaffe. A pension of £300, afterwards doubled, was granted him, and he held his appointment under twelve succeeding viceroys. From 1775 he was engaged in the writing of plays. Among others, his tragedy Braganza was successfully performed at Drury Lane in 1775, Conspiracy in 1796, The Law of Lombardy in 1779, and The Count of Narbonne at Covent Garden in 1781. In 1794 he published an heroic poem Roman Portraits, and The Confessions of Jacques Baptiste Couteau, a satire on the excesses of the French Revolution. He died at Blackrock, near Dublin, on the 31st of May 1803.
JEPHTHAH, one of the judges of Israel, in the Bible, was an illegitimate son of Gilead, and, being expelled from his father’s house by his lawful brethren, took refuge in the Syrian land of Tob, where he gathered around him a powerful band of homeless men like himself. The Ammonites pressing hard on his countrymen, the elders of Gilead called for his help, which he consented to give on condition that in the event of victory he should be made their head (Judg. xi. 1-xii. 7). His name is best known in history and literature in connexion with his vow, which led to the sacrifice of his daughter on his successful return. The reluctance shown by many writers in accepting the plain sense of the narrative on this point proceeds to a large extent on unwarranted assumptions as to the stage of ethical development which had been reached in Israel in the period of the judges, or at the time when the narrative took shape. The annual lamentation of the women for her death suggests a mythical origin (see Adonis). Attached to the narrative is an account of a quarrel between Jephthah and the Ephraimites. The latter were defeated, and their retreat was cut off by the Gileadites, who had seized the fords of the Jordan. As the fugitives attempted to cross they were bidden to say “shibbōleth” (“flood” or “ear of corn”), and those who said “sibbōleth” (the Ephraimites apparently being unused to sh), were at once put to death. In this way 42,000 of the tribe were killed.[1]
The loose connexion between this and the main narrative, as also the lengthy speech to the children of Ammon (xi. 14-27), which really relates to Moab, has led some writers to infer that two distinct heroes and situations have been combined. See further the commentaries on the Book of Judges (q.v.), and Cheyne, Ency. Bib., art. “Jephthah.”
(S. A. C.)
[1] Similarly a Syrian story tells how the Druses came to slay Ibrahim Pasha’s troops, and desiring to spare the Syrians ordered the men to say gamal (camel). As the Syrians pronounce the g soft, and the Egyptians the g, hard, the former were easily identified. Other examples from the East will be found in H. C. Kay, Yaman, p. 36, and in S. Lane-Poole, History of Egypt in the Middle Ages, p. 300. Also, at the Sicilian Vespers (March 13, 1282) the French were made to betray themselves by their pronunciation of ceci and ciceri (Ital. c like tch; Fr. c like s).