Judges 3:12-30

1. Oppression under the Moabites and deliverance through Ehud 3:12-30

The Moabites and Ammonites were not only neighbors who both lived to the southeast of Canaan, but they were also descendants of the same ancestor, Lot. The Amalekites lived on Israel’s southern border and were descendants of Esau. The Moabites had allied with the Ammonites and the Amalekites and had captured the site of Jericho (the "city of palm trees," Judges 3:13). They had evidently rebuilt it since Joshua’s conquest. [Note: See my comments on Joshua 6:26-27 in my notes on Joshua for further explanation.] The Moabites had taken over the surrounding area and had forced Israel to serve them for 18 years (Judges 3:14).

Jericho was in Benjamin’s territory, so it was not unusual that God would raise up a judge from that tribe to lead Israel against the Moabites. We learn later that the Benjamites at this time were far from admirable on the whole (chs. 19-21). Yet God raised up a faithful man from this tribe to do His will. The English text’s description of Ehud as left-handed (Judges 3:15) is misleading. The Hebrew expression translated "a left-handed man" probably means "a man restricted as to his right hand." [Note: J. A. Soggin, Judges: A Commentary, p. 50; et al.] This was an ironic condition for a Benjamite since "Benjamin" means "son of the right hand." Many Benjamites were left-handed (Judges 20:16) and not a few were ambidextrous (1 Chronicles 12:2). Ehud may not have been able to use his right hand as well as his left. In spite of this abnormality God used him to bring a great victory to Israel.

Most commentators regarded Ehud’s methods as entirely legitimate. [Note: E.g., Cundall and Morris; George Bush, Notes on Judges; Wood; Robert B. Chisholm Jr., "Ehud: Assessing an Assassin," Bibliotheca Sacra 168:671 (July-September 2011):274-82; et al.] Some, however, did not, as the following quotation illustrates.

"Ehud’s conduct must be judged according to the spirit of those times, when it was thought allowable to adopt any means of destroying the enemy of one’s nation. The treacherous assassination of a hostile king is not to be regarded as an act of the Spirit of God, and therefore is not set before us as an example to be imitated. Although Jehovah raised up Ehud as a deliverer to His people when oppressed by Eglon, it is not stated (and this ought particularly to be observed) that the Spirit of Jehovah came upon Ehud, and still less that Ehud assassinated the hostile king under the impulse of that Spirit. Ehud proved himself to have been raised up by the Lord as the deliverer of Israel, simply by the fact that he actually delivered his people from the bondage of the Moabites, and it by no means follows that the means which he selected were either commanded or approved by Jehovah." [Note: Keil and Delitzsch, p. 298.]

The facts that Ehud did what he did as an act of war and that God nowhere condemned him for it have led most interpreters to believe he was correct in assassinating King Eglon (lit. fat ox). God used other tricksters (e.g., Jacob, Samson) and other murderers (e.g., Moses, David, Paul). Note that Ehud (possibly "loner" [Note: E. John Hamlin, Judges, p. 73.] ) had no other Israelites with him when he confronted Eglon. He stood alone for God.

It seems that Ehud delivered the Israelites’ taxes to King Eglon, left Eglon, passed the "idols" (lit. sculptured stones) at Gilgal, and then returned to Eglon. This may have been a Gilgal on the border between Benjamin and Judah west of Jericho rather than the one northeast of Jericho (cf. Joshua 15:7). [Note: Wolf, p. 400.] He had prepared to execute Eglon before going to Jericho. Did he lose heart at first when he left Jericho? Did he receive fresh motivation to kill the king when he passed the Canaanite objects of worship at Gilgal and then returned to Jericho to finish the job? This seems to be what happened.

The room in which Ehud met Eglon (Judges 3:20) was on the flat roof of his house. Rooms built this way caught the prevailing currents of air and therefore provided a cool place of retreat from the hot weather.

Evidently Eglon did not expect Ehud to draw his sword with his left hand. He probably did not know he could do so. This was part of Ehud’s strategy. The sword was a short cubit in length, about 16 inches. This is the only place in the Old Testament where this Hebrew word describes a cubit. The short cubit was as long as the distance between the elbow and the knuckles of a fist. Ehud’s sword went all the way through Eglon’s fat body. It apparently contained no crosspiece (hilt) between the handle and the blade. The handle lodged in the fat while the point opened a hole in his back where his excrement oozed out.

"Thus by way of a humorous if vulgar twist, something unexpected ’comes out’ of Eglon-his excrement. Such a grotesque occurrence would have been precisely the kind of detail that a story of this sort would have delighted in recounting and would be unlikely to omit. Although it no doubt strikes modern readers as vulgar and distasteful, in the context of the story it adds a note of extreme humiliation with respect to the Moabite king that would have delighted an Israelite audience, especially as it takes place at the very height of the drama: the national hero not only dispatched the enemy king with much cunning but in the process caused him to become besmirched with feces." [Note: Michael L. Barré, "The Meaning of prsdn in Judges III 22," Vetus Testamentum 41:1 (1991):9-10. Cf. McCann, p. 23.]

The writer may have recorded this last disgusting detail to draw a parallel with the unclean Moabites’ departure from the land following Ehud’s victory. Notice the cool way Ehud behaved after he slew the king in his cool room (Judges 3:23). Perhaps it was the odor of Eglon’s excrement as well as the locked doors that led the servants to conclude that the king was relieving himself (Judges 3:24).

"With effective employment of ambiguity, irony, satire, hyperbole, and caricature, he [the writer] sketches a literary cartoon that pokes fun at the Moabites and brings glory to God. . . . Biblical historians seldom, if ever, wrote their pieces primarily so later readers could reconstruct historical events. Their agendas were generally theological and polemical, and few texts are as overt in the latter respect as ours." [Note: Block, Judges . . ., pp. 156-57. See also Robert B. Chisholm Jr., "Yahweh versus the Canaanite Gods: Polemic in Judges and 1 Samuel 1-7," Bibliotheca Sacra 164:654 (April-June 2007):165-80.]

"The alleged inferior defeats an obvious superior; the one supposed to be unclean leaves the royal Eglon prostrate in his own dung; the apparently disabled person proves both mentally and physically more adept than his opponents." [Note: McCann, p. 45.]

Archaeologists have not yet identified the town of Seirah (Judges 3:26), but it may have stood to the northwest of Gilgal in Ephraim’s hill country (Judges 3:27).

The Moabites who at this time were living west of the Jordan River would have fled back home eastward to their native country. For this reason the Israelites seized the fording place (Judges 3:28).

Judges 3:29 is difficult to interpret for two reasons. First, the word translated "thousand" can also mean "military unit" (cf. Judges 20:10). Second, it is not clear whether the Israelites killed these Moabites as they tried to cross the Jordan on this occasion. Perhaps this was the total Moabite force that the Israelites killed in their war with Moab. In either case this was a great victory for Israel.

The writer’s primary emphasis in this pericope seems to be that God used a man whom others would have regarded as unusual, because he was left-handed, to effect a great victory. Ehud did not excuse himself from doing God’s will because he was different, as many Christians do. He stepped out in faith in spite of his physical peculiarity. Israel too had physical abnormalities, but when she stepped out in trust and obedience God blessed her with success.