Book of Judges: Ehud and the concealed sword
Ehud is described as left-handed in the Book of Judges. He is introduced as a member of the Tribe of Benjamin and a judge sent by God to deliver the Israelites from Moabite domination. The narrative places him before Eglon, the Moabite king, with a weapon hidden where it was not expected. Ehud approaches Eglon on the pretext of delivering the Israelites' annual tribute.
The weapon was a double-edged shortsword about a cubit long, described as eighteen inches. Its size and shape made it useful for a stabbing thrust. Ehud made the sword and fastened it to his right thigh, an arrangement connected to his left-handedness. The left side of the body is also associated with deception or darkness in the discussion of his left-handedness. Left-handedness also symbolizes a position outside the culturally accepted social norm of leadership in ancient Israel.
Once Ehud and Eglon met, Ehud said that he had a secret message for the king. Eglon dismissed his attendants and allowed a private meeting. The meeting place is translated as a cooling roof chamber. Its precise interpretation has prompted discussion, with a bathroom suggested because the servants later believed their king was relieving himself. Some scholarly interpretations connect the translations of the room, abdomen, and dirt with sexual undertones, reading them as feminizing Eglon and lowering his status.
Ehud announced that he had a message from God, drew the sword, and stabbed Eglon in the abdomen. The blade disappeared into the wound, and Ehud left it there. The Hebrew term translated as abdomen can also mean a woman's womb. Another expression, commonly rendered as dirt coming out, has an uncertain meaning because it occurs only once in the Hebrew Bible. Some translations understand it as a reference to feces, while other interpretations connect the expression to Ehud's movement away from the king.
Ehud locked the chamber doors and left, leaving the attendants to interpret the closed room. When they returned, they assumed Eglon was relieving himself and waited until the delay had become embarrassing. Only then did they unlock the door and find him dead. The disputed expression can also be treated as an architectural term for the area through which Ehud leaves. The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges regards the antechamber interpretation as based on a guess in the Septuagint. Ellicott suggests that its writers may have been concerned with propriety.
After escaping, Ehud reached Seirah in Ephraim. He sounded the shofar and rallied the Israelite tribes. The struggle then moved beyond the chamber into a wider conflict with the Moabites. The Israelites cut off the fords of the Jordan River so the Moabites could not cross home, killing about ten thousand Moabite soldiers. The Book of Judges reports peace in the land for eighty years after Eglon's death. Ehud was the second judge chosen by God. He is also identified as Ehud son of Gera.
Biblical scholar Coogan has argued that the Ehud story was probably a local folk tale later edited by Deuteronomistic historians. In that interpretation, an existing narrative was fitted into the recurring pattern used for the major judges: apostasy, hardship, a cry to the Lord, and rescue. The Israelites' suffering under Eglon belongs to that structure, as does their appeal for deliverance. The closing period of rest also fits a pattern found in stories of other major judges, including Gideon. The opening of the episode in the Book of Judges says that the Israelites again did evil in God's sight and that the Lord strengthened Eglon against them. When they cried out, the Lord raised up Ehud as their deliverer. Coogan places the editing within the historians' broader incorporation of earlier narratives into their portrayal of life in early Israel.
Barry Webb offers another emphasis, seeing Ehud as an unlikely hero directed by the Lord to bring deliverance to a desperate people. Ford Madox Brown illustrated Ehud assassinating Eglon, while a late medieval image in Rudolf von Ems' Weltchronik shows Jews rejoicing as the king is killed. In that image, the figures wear anachronistic Jewish hats. The illustration dates from the late fourteenth century. In another translation of the uncertain Hebrew expression, the sword is understood to have come out of Eglon's back. The American Standard Version also offers a variant in which Ehud goes out into an antechamber. The King James Version uses "dirt" as a euphemism, while Young's Literal Translation renders the expression as "it goeth out at the fundament."