"A Left-Handed Judge: Ehud" Judges 3: 12-30

Lots of interesting stuff in this story.

The "city of palms" mentioned is Jericho.  Remember the story of how Joshua defeated Jericho.  now it goes back o the enemy.

The Moabite King Eglon is fat and cool in in his palace; Israelites are hot and barren outside the realm of power.

Ehud is left-handed, or in the Hebrew a "man restricted in his right hand."  He is a Benjamite, which ironically means "son of the right hand."  Left-handedness was considered peculiar and unnatural.  Some scholars think that Ehud had a deformed right hand.  This all becomes important when the Moabite guard only checks Ehud's left-side for a knive -- since most men were right-handed and would carry their weapon on their left side.

Ehud crafts his own improvised weapon.  This is a pattern in Judges -- the deliverers creatively develop weapons to use.

there are sacrificial overtones to the story, including the sacrifice of Eglon, the fatted calf (Eglon actually derives from th3e world for calf/bull.  We also note that he has gotten fat off the tribute paid to him by the Israelites.

Hebrew is much more graphic in describing Eglon's death than the translations we read.  It actually says something like, "even the handle entered after the blade and the fat closed around the blade...and the excrement came out."  this apparently was a sign of death -- in other battle descriptions of the time references would be made to soldiers whose excrement had come out.  The term used for "fat" is the sacrificial term used for the choicest parts of the sacrifice.

Ehud makes his escape because the door to the bathroom is locked.

After escaping, Ehud leads the Israelites to victory over the Moabites.

In the midst of this farcical story of Ehud delivering Israel, we need to remember that the Moabites had controlled the area for 18 years. They certainly were not bungling idiots during that time.  Or, if the Moabites are that gullible and dumb, it magnifies the power of God who gave them power over the Israelites as punishment for Israel's unfaithfulness.

This is a humorous story.  Surely the Israelites laughed as they heard about the fat Moabite king being killed while on the toilet by the left-handed Ehud.

What does it tell us about God?  Maybe that God continues to work through strange people?  What do we do with the idea that God "gave" Israel to the Moabites?  That seems like a hard theology to apply in our world, although sometimes we readily claim God has given us our successes (generally I find that we are less ready to give God credit for the bad things that happen).  We have the recurring theme of God rescuing Israel.

Where do you see the sermon in this story?