Judges 3 Study Notes

3:18-23 Ehud had been sent to Eglon to deliver Israel’s tribute to the oppressor, a task that he completed and then returned to Israelite territory. Significantly, the landmark that identified Israelite territory was the carved images near Gilgal, a telling pointer to the state of Israelite worship in those days. Ehud then dismissed the rest of his party, returning alone to meet with Eglon. He appealed to Eglon’s vanity by claiming I have a secret message for you. The Hebrew word translated “message” can also mean “word” or “thing.” The original readers would have recognized the nature of the “secret” long before Eglon got the point. Once alone, Ehud delivered God’s “message” for Eglon by running him through with the concealed sword. Apparently, Eglon was so fat that the entire eighteen inches, including the handle, could be contained by his belly. The waste came out, a final humiliation for Israel’s defeated enemy.

3:24-26 The dimwittedness of Eglon’s servants would have been humorous to the first readers of Judges. The odor might have contributed to the servants’ supposition that the king was “occupied.” The contents of their master’s bowels were indeed being emptied, but not in the manner they imagined.

3:27-30 Ehud then sounded the ram’s horn, summoning Ephraim to holy war against the leaderless Moabites. He gave due credit to the Lord’s involvement in the battle, and he led his people in a successful assault on the fords of the Jordan. This would have cut off the Moabite retreat and separated them from any possible reinforcements. About ten thousand. . . able-bodied . . . Moabites may be a way of affirming an overwhelming victory, according to the conventions of ancient literature. The result of the victory was eighty years of peace.

3:31 This brief note introduces Shamgar, sometimes called a “minor judge,” though never explicitly said to judge Israel. His name is extraordinary on two counts: the form “Shamgar” is not that of a normal Hebrew name, and the ascription son of Anath suggests that he was (or had been) a follower of Anath, the Canaanite goddess of war. This foreigner apparently delivered Israel by striking down six hundred Philistines with an oxgoad. The Philistines, or Sea Peoples, were not native to Canaan but arrived there in the twelfth to eleventh centuries BC from Anatolia and Crete. From their bases in the coastal plain, the Philistines became an increasing problem for the Israelites as they pressed eastward into the foothills of Israel. A cattle prod was a sharp stick up to eight feet long tapering to a sharp point, which may have been tipped with metal (1Sm 13:21). This is the first in a series of unusual instruments of deliverance in the book of Judges—from Jael’s hammer (Jdg 4:21), to Gideon’s pitchers and torches (7:19-20), to Samson’s donkey jawbone (15:15).