Who is ehud in the old testament

Near the end of a eighteen year period God raised up Ehud to free Israel. Ehud was sent to Jericho on Israel's behalf as an envoy to meet King Eglon.

Before meeting with King Eglon, Ehud crafted a two-edge sword and stored it away by strapping it under his thigh. When Ehud went to meet with King Eglon he brought several servants with him and tribute. Once Ehud presented the tribute he left the palace throne room, but returned once all of the attendants had left. Telling the King he had a secret message for him, Ehud approached Eglon. With his left-hand Eglon reached over to his thigh and stabbed Eglon in the belly.

Once the tribute has been delivered to Eglon, Ehud heads home together with the Israelite bearers who carried the tribute. For Eglon, it looks like the mission has been completed. He has received what he believes he is entitled to.

Ehud, however, turns around at the "sculptured stones" and heads back to Eglon v. The mention of the "sculptured stones" obviously has a structuring function in the pericope of Judg They do not appear only at the beginning of the pericope. They also appear at its end. Their function in the story is therefore to enclose the episode about Ehud's secret mission. These central verses are clearly structured, as shown by the word use:. Why the author explicitly names precisely these at Gilgal is unclear.

The term appears about 20 times in the OT, mostly with the negative meaning of "idols. For the reader, they call to mind the stones that the Israelites had set up at Gilgal after crossing the Jordan Josh It therefore cannot be ruled out that the "sculptured stones" in Judg , 26 have a religious connotation as well.

According to Josh , the stones had a double meaning. Through these stones, all nations would remember how mighty YHWH is, and Israel would continue to fear him. Precisely these two elements are also addressed in Judg Furthermore, the in Judg Between the moment when Ehud makes an about-face at the and the moment when he walks by again, something crucial happens, namely the death of Eglon.

When Ehud reaches the king again, he knows that he must immediately draw the king's attention. He says, "O King, I have a secret for you. The text literally says, "I have a secret for you" v. This Hebrew term has a double meaning. The first is "word," and that is how Eglon also interprets it -as the announcement of a secret message. He immediately demands silence, an order interpreted by the others present as a command to leave and let Eglon and Ehud talk to each other in private.

The fact that Ehud is no longer accompanied by the Israelite bearers makes it even more exciting for the king, but it also sets him at ease. Little threat can be expected of a solitary, seemingly unarmed man. However, in addition to "word," also means "thing" or "object. According to the text, Ehud takes one more step closer to the king. He goes into the upper chamber - a place usually reserved for the king alone.

Having entered, Ehud says, "I have a for you from God. Ehud has indeed come because of God. Once again the ambiguous term is used, and interpreted by Eglon in a different way than the reader.

For the Israelite reader, it's clear. He's thinking of the weapon as "thing" that will, thanks to the divinely sent Ehud, herald the end of the Moabite oppression. For Eglon, the message becomes even more mysterious as "word". It appears not only to be secret, the words seem moreover to be a divine oracle. He rises, perhaps out of respect. At that moment, Ehud grabs the sword from his right thigh with his left hand and stabs the king in the belly.

In contrast to other biblical passages that describe murder - the story of Cain's murder of his brother Abel comes to mind Gen - the murder of Ehud is described with much attention paid to the gruesome details. The text continues with the first part of v. And the fat closed over the blade. He Ehud did not pull the sword out. The last part of v. The verb is a third person masculine singular form of the verb which means "to go out. One could see the not-explicitly-named Ehud as the subject of the verb, and interpret the term as an opening through which Ehud can escape after the murder.

This interpretation is, however, problematic. Indeed the following verse says again that Ehud - and here he is called by name - goes away. Others therefore consider the unknown term , and not Ehud, to be the subject of the verb. This noun is then seen as being related to the noun , which is most often interpreted as the content of Eglon's belly or intestines. The following verse v. To begin with, the interpretation of this verse is also made difficult by the presence of a hapax legomenon, namely the term.

If one interprets the prefix as an article and the last consonant as a suffix indicating direction, one is left with the base. From an etymological perspective, this word may be related to the verb which means "to order.

Verse 23 then says that Ehud closes the doors. The question that presents itself here is, does Ehud pull the upper chamber's doors shut when he leaves? And does he close them from the the outside or from the inside? One often chooses the latter interpretation. In this case, Ehud would have to make use of a secret exit in order to be able to leave the upper chamber. In this case, the secret exit was: the opening or a window of the toilet. This hypothesis has led to all sorts of guess-work concerning the architecture of Eglon's palace.

Baruch Halpern, for example, supposes that Eglon's throne room was above a space called the. From there, he would have walked through the reception hall and front hall to the outside without arousing any suspicion. After seeing Ehud leave, the servants would have returned to the reception hall, and upon noticing the locked doors, they would have remembered that the king was taking care of his bodily needs.

Whatever the case, with the passage of time, the servants obviously get worried as Eglon doesn't open the door. They retrieve a key and open the door themselves to find their king dead on the floor. Just like in v. As the text in v. They are the "border stones" demarcating the passageway between life and death - both for Eglon and the Israelites. As soon as he reaches Israelite territory in Ephraim v.

At this point, YHWH once again makes his entry upon the story explicit. An inclusio is thus formed with v. Under Ehud's leadership, the Israelites occupy all the wadable spots of the Jordan so that the Moabites cannot cross. The Israelites then kill "ten thousand Moabites, all strong, able-bodied men. The goal has been achieved, as thanks to Ehud, "the land had eighty years of rest" v. Also in terms of form, the story comes to a conclusion. As the author had said in v.

In either case, the Hebrew verb is used. This disobedience would be the occasion for the emergence of Deborah as "judge" in Israel. For a biblical scholar, Judg is a precious text. It enables the exegete to demonstrate that the biblical authors were extremely proficient storytellers, as well as to show how they were such good storytellers.

Not only is the story of Ehud and Eglon thoughtfully composed, it also has numerous keywords that lend cohesion to the story. Like no other, Judg bulges with numerous forms and wordplays, which unfortunately mostly get lost in translation. Less brilliant, however, is the brutal violence with which the text confronts today's reader. And it is precisely this that strikes, or rather shocks, today's reader who for the most part reads the text in translation. And it is precisely this aspect, which at first glance complicates things even more, that holds the key to the understanding of this text.

God and violence are inseparable in the OT, regardless of how many texts also bring a peaceful and loving God to the fore. This is not the place to comprehensively address this general issue.

I only want to make some simple remarks in connection to the pericope of Ehud and Eglon without lapsing into general statements. To begin with, it is striking that God's violence in this pericope initially falls not upon Israel's enemies, but upon Israel itself. Because Israel had no king for those years, the Book of Judges tells the story of 12 national leaders who led the Israelites during that time span.

These leaders are referred to in the text as "judges" Sometimes the judges were military commanders, sometimes they were political governors, and sometimes they were both. Ehud was the second of the 12 judges who led the Israelites during a time of need. The first was named Othniel. The most famous judge today is probably Samson, and his story was used to conclude the Book of Judges. One of the key themes recorded in the Book of Judges is that the Israelites were caught in a cycle of repeated rebellion against God During Ehud's time, the Israelites were ruled by their bitter enemies the Moabites.

The Moabites were led by their king, Eglon, who is described in the text as "an extremely fat man" Eglon and the Moabites oppressed the Israelites for 18 years by the time they finally repented of their sin and cried out to God for help.

In response, God raised up Ehud to deliver His people from their oppression. Ehud ultimately accomplished this deliverance by deceiving and assassinating Eglon, the Moabite king. Ehud began by fashioning a small, double-edged sword that he attached to his right leg, under his clothes. This was important because the vast majority of soldiers in the ancient world kept their weapons on their left legs, which made them easy to draw out with their right hands.

Ehud was left-handed, however, which allowed him to keep his blade a secret. Next, Ehud and a small group of companions came to Eglon with a tribute -- money and other goods the Israelites were forced to pay as part of their oppression. Ehud later returned to the king alone and asked to speak with him in private, claiming he wanted to deliver a message from God.

Eglon was curious and unafraid, believing Ehud to be unarmed. When Eglon 's servants and other attendants left the room, Ehud quickly drew his improvised sword with his left hand and stabbed it into the king's stomach. Because Eglon was obese, the blade sank into the hilt and disappeared from view. Ehud then locked the doors from the inside and escaped through the porch. When Eglon's servants checked on him and found the doors locked, they assumed he was using the bathroom and didn't intervene.

Eventually, they realized something was wrong, forced entry into the room, and discovered that their king was dead. Meanwhile, Ehud made his way back to Israelite territory and used the news of Eglon's assassination to raise an army.