Judges 3:12-30 - The Sinister Judge

Sometimes salvation seems downright disgusting.

SINCE WE LAST LEFT OFF... As one commentator has put it, the longer Israel lived in Canaan, the more Canaan lived in them. They fall into a vicious cycle in which they rebel, the LORD brings discipline, they cry out for salvation, which the LORD sends. Then it all starts over again.

Judges 3:12–31 (NIV)

¹² Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD, and because they did this evil the LORD gave Eglon king of Moab power over Israel. ¹³ Getting the Ammonites and Amalekites to join him, Eglon came and attacked Israel, and they took possession of the City of Palms.  ¹⁴ The Israelites were subject to Eglon king of Moab for eighteen years.

¹⁵ Again the Israelites cried out to the LORD, and he gave them a deliverer—Ehud, a left-handed man, the son of Gera the Benjamite. The Israelites sent him with tribute to Eglon king of Moab. ¹⁶ Now Ehud had made a double-edged sword about a cubit long, which he strapped to his right thigh under his clothing. ¹⁷ He presented the tribute to Eglon king of Moab, who was a very fat man. ¹⁸ After Ehud had presented the tribute, he sent on their way those who had carried it. ¹⁹ But on reaching the stone images near Gilgal he himself went back to Eglon and said, “Your Majesty, I have a secret message for you.”

The king said to his attendants, “Leave us!” And they all left.

²⁰ Ehud then approached him while he was sitting alone in the upper room of his palace  and said, “I have a message from God for you.” As the king rose from his seat, ²¹ Ehud reached with his left hand, drew the sword from his right thigh and plunged it into the king’s belly. ²² Even the handle sank in after the blade, and his bowels discharged. Ehud did not pull the sword out, and the fat closed in over it. ²³ Then Ehud went out to the porch; he shut the doors of the upper room behind him and locked them.

²⁴ After he had gone, the servants came and found the doors of the upper room locked. They said, “He must be relieving himself in the inner room of the palace.” ²⁵ They waited to the point of embarrassment, but when he did not open the doors of the room, they took a key and unlocked them. There they saw their lord fallen to the floor, dead.

²⁶ While they waited, Ehud got away. He passed by the stone images and escaped to Seirah. ²⁷ When he arrived there, he blew a trumpet in the hill country of Ephraim, and the Israelites went down with him from the hills, with him leading them.

²⁸ “Follow me,” he ordered, “for the LORD has given Moab, your enemy, into your hands.” So they followed him down and took possession of the fords of the Jordan that led to Moab; they allowed no one to cross over. ²⁹ At that time they struck down about ten thousand Moabites, all vigorous and strong; not one escaped. ³⁰ That day Moab was made subject to Israel, and the land had peace for eighty years.

Belgic Confession

Article 13: Providence

We believe that this good God,

after he created all things,

did not abandon them to chance or fortune

but leads and governs them

according to his holy will,

in such a way that nothing happens in this world

without his orderly arrangement.

Yet God is not the author of,

nor can he be charged with,

the sin that occurs.

For his power and goodness

are so great and incomprehensible

that he arranges and does his work very well and justly

even when the devils and wicked men act unjustly.

Summary

If you'd never heard of Ehud the Sinister (the Latin word for 'left handed') before today, there's a good chance your jaw is on the floor right about now. It just doesn't seem very Biblical. For some reason we don't put up much of a fight when the sort of disgusting content we read about in Judges 3 fills our screens, but it just seems plain wrong to see it fill the pages of scripture.

But the dagger being plunged into the smelly nether regions of King Eglon isn't what ought to disgust you the most in this strange tale. Rather, it's the passage's opening words... words that we've become so accustomed to that we've become used to their stench: Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD. Examples of God's people - including us - doing evil after all He's done to make us holy so often pass by unnoticed because we've become so desensitized.

The cycle presses on. Because they did evil, the LORD gave a wicked king power over Israel. Start making a mental list of how many wicked kings God uses throughout history as we read the Bible together to shepherd and discipline His people! But notice that how long it took before the Israelites once again cried out to the LORD: eighteen years. They were so numbed to their own evil stink and a pagan king taxing them to the hilt (pun intended) that it took nearly two decades before they even reached out to God for salvation.

  Dig Deeper  

Today's episode raises an important hermeneutical question (hermeneutics is a fancy word for 'interpretive method'): We read that the LORD gave His people a deliverer - Ehud, a left handed man. Does this mean that all of Ehud's subsequent actions in this passage are divinely ordained and free from sin?

After all, the sinister Ehud didn't just obscure his true purpose in returning to the king after delivering that year's tribute (likely a hefty dose of produce that the Israelites desperately needed), but he flat out lied - even more, he lied in the LORD's name, telling the king that he had a secret message from God for him. Nowhere do we read of Ehud consulting the LORD's will or being told what to do. Were Ehud's actions a manifestation of God's justice, or was it his own sinful retribution that God used in a sinless way?

I don't have a solid answer. And we're going to come across lots more similar curiosities that will cause us to scratch our heads as we continue reading the Bible together. But we can be OK with this, because the primary point of these stories isn't for us to be sinister and sneaky like Eglon.

The primary point of every story we read in the Bible is that God will always save His covenant people. And quite often, as we see here in Judges 3, God's salvation comes in strange, unexpected, and sometimes even disgusting ways. Keep that in mind as this week we once again are reminded of what our Savior experienced on the cross.

AAA Prayer (About)

• ACKNOWLEDGE WHO GOD IS: Our Father, who always saves His people;

• ALIGN YOUR LIFE WITH GOD'S WILL: Pray that in the strength of the Spirit you would break the cycle of sin that's so easy to fall into;

• ASK GOD FOR WHAT YOU NEED:

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