Ehud, Judge of Israel

The description is very graphic. He plunges this 18-inch dagger, including the handle, and his hand goes right into his belly. Well, why does the Bible tell us this awful story? Why does the Bible tell us this awful and graphic story? Keep listening to find out. I'm Nathan W. Bingham, and it's good to have you with us for this Tuesday edition of Renewing Your Mind as we continue our time in Derek Thomas' brand new series, Who Are They? Lesson-known characters of the Bible. Before we get to today's rather graphic incident, if you'd like to help spread the reach of the teaching you hear day in and day out on Renewing Your Mind, one simple way you can do that is to search for Renewing Your Mind on YouTube and subscribe to our official channel there. As you watch, like, and comment on the videos, you encourage the algorithm to push these episodes in front of more people. So thank you for subscribing to the Renewing Your Mind YouTube channel and turning on notifications. Well, let's meet Ehud, a judge of Israel. Here's Dr. Thomas. Today, we want to go to Judges Chapter 3 and to the second judge, and that's Ehud. I'm going to read from verses 18 through 22 of Judges Chapter 3. "And when Ehud had finished presenting the tribute, he sent away the people who carried the tribute, but he himself turned back at the idols near Gilgall and said, 'I have a secret message for you, O King,' and he commanded silence, and all his attendants went out from his presence. And Ehud came to him as he was sitting alone in his cool roof chamber, and Ehud said, 'I have a message from God for you,' and he arose from his seat, and Ehud, who reached with his left hand, took the sword from his right thigh and thrust it into his belly. And the hilt also went in after the blade, and the fat closed over the blade, for he did not pull the sword out of his belly, and the dung came out." Well, that's a very, very graphic story. Now, it's set in a period when verse 12 of Chapter 3, "The people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord." That's a recurring theme in Judges. It occurs many, many times. It's telling you that the setting, the context here is one of apostasy. God's people, God's covenant people, the children of Abraham, have rebelled. They've turned against the Lord. They're walking not in light, but in darkness, and God raises up these Judges. And we are introduced here to a king, King of Moab. There's some kind of alliance with Moab and Israel. And the king's name is Eglon. And Eglon has conquered part of the territory of Israel and has taken the city of palms. That's euphemism for Jericho. You will remember, of course, the destruction of Jericho and Joshua, and how they circled the city seven times and so on. And the walls of Jericho came tumbling down. Well, all that was gained by Joshua has now been lost to this king of Moab, Eglon. And 18 years have passed, and they cry to God for a deliverer and enter Ahud. Ahud is described in this passage as being left-handed. There's probably more to it than just the fact that he's left-handed. The fact that the scripture draws attention to it, he wouldn't have been the only left-handed person. Commentator suggests that probably his right hand was unusable. There was some kind of deformity. And therefore, the choice of Ahud may seem to be a little strange. This is a period of time when such things were not treated perhaps with the respect that you would expect today. He's the son of Benjamin. He's from the tribe of Benjamin, and Ben is the Hebrew word for son, and Jamin is the Hebrew word for right. He's the son of my right-hand Benjamin. That's what Benjamin means, but he's left-handed. Now, in verse 15, the people of Israel crying out for a deliverer, they're sending tribute to Eglon the king of Moab. This is a tax that Eglon the king of Moab is demanding of Israel, and they're sending all kinds of silver and gold and metal and anything of value. And Ahud brings metal of his own, and he brings a dagger, and it's described in the passage as being 18 inches long. That's a substantial dagger, and he has one intent. He's planned it. He's thought it through. God has spoken to him. He has a task to perform, and that is to kill Eglon the king of Moab. Now, in verse 17, he presented the tribute to Eglon king of Moab. Now, Eglon was a very fat man. Well, the ESV doesn't spare any detail here. He was an enormous figure with a big belly, and that's going to be important a little later on. And Ahud's entourage brings the tribute. He dismisses them. He tells the king that he has something to say privately to him. Eglon may be naive to dismiss his men and to be found on the rooftop alone with Ahud, perhaps because he was left-handed and maybe somewhat crippled. He didn't see Ahud as a threat. And what does that tell you? That this king thought that there was going to be something of value, something to gain, maybe a compromise or something like that. But then, suddenly, verse 21 says, Ahud reached with his left hand. He's got a sword strapped to his right thigh, so he would reach with his left hand and bring out this dagger, and he stabs him in the stomach. And the description is very graphic. He plunges this 18-inch dagger, including the handle, and his hand goes right into his belly, and the dung came out. Well, why does the Bible tell us this awful story? Because it's the story that Ahud told. He's alone. There are no witnesses, but he would have told this story. And it's important because of what happens next. Eglon is lying on the floor. There's dung, and it smells. And Ahud locks the door and manages to escape. And when the servants come, well, they can smell it from the other side of the door. And they think he's on the privy, and he's having a really bad time of it. And so they wait. Maybe they wait for 10 minutes, 15, 20 minutes. But eventually, they knock the door down, and they discover their king dead on the floor. And Ahud has time to escape, and he blows a trumpet and calls on the men of Israel. It's a premeditated plan, and 10,000 Moabites died. And the city of palms is once more in their hands. Jericho is once more in their hands. That's the story. So what do you make of it? Why is it in the Bible? Well, it's in the Bible because it's part of the history of Israel. You might be offended by it. You might think this is sordid. What sort of story is this as part of the history of Israel? And you notice that when Ahud does the deed, he says in verse 20, "I have a message from God for you." That's pretty bold, isn't it? He was doing God's business. He was a warrior. The first thing that we need to think about here is that this is war. God's people are trying to inherit the land that God had promised to them. And so far, that's not going well, as you can expect. And it was always going to be. How would God's people ever conquer the land of Canaan without opposition, without war, without bloodshed? And there's 80 years of peace that follows in the wake of this event. And God uses, well, he uses messy business to bring about good. And that's often the case, isn't it? Ahud is more than a judge. He's God's man for this period of history. He's a judge. He's a ruler. But he's also, well, he's also a military chief. Some commentators try to allegorize the passage. And they talk about the sword of the spirit plunging into the belly of the wicked and so on. And others try to moralize it. Don't be like Ahud. Well, I think that misses the point. In verse 15, we read that the people of Israel cried out to the Lord, and the Lord raised up for them a deliverer. Ahud is a deliverer. Let's use a different word. He's their savior. He saves them from their enemies. He gives them the promise of God, a part of the promised land. What does a savior wear in 1300 BC? What does a savior in 1300 BC actually look like? Well, the answer is he looks like Ahud. He looks like this judge, a man who takes on the enemy of God's people, who's taxing them to the point of pain and hurt. And he restores Israel. He defeats the enemy and restores Israel. Well, what is the gospel story? It's about God sending a deliverer to conquer the enemy. The reason the Son of Man appeared, John says, is to destroy the works of the devil, to conquer all the wickedness of the devil. Well, he's not Jesus, but he's God's instrument. He's God's deliverer, in this case, with a sword in his hand. It's the unfolding narrative of salvation. The judges ruled from 1400 BC to 1300 BC, roughly. And what happens when God takes away everything that Abraham longed for and that Moses pastorally believed in delivering his people out of the bondage of Egypt and into the wilderness, and though he wouldn't seat himself into the promised land? Well, the judges tell you, and it's not, well, it's not pretty. Israel fails God. They commit apostasy. They did that, which was right in their own eyes. They lived a lifestyle to please themselves, and they forgot the promises of the covenant, and God comes in judgment. But then God steps in and restores them, and he sends deliverers like Ahud. They pray to God to send a deliverer, and God hears their cry and comes into their defense. And things go fine for a while, and then there's an endless cycle of restoration and apostasy and restoration and apostasy. What they need is a king. What they need is someone like David or Solomon, and that's in their future. But for now, it's all so very messy. Most of our Christian lives have messy aspects to it. Dale Ralph Davis tells the story of the peanuts cartoon Linus and Lucy and Linus is eating PB and J Sandwich, and he notices his hands, and he begins to do what Linus often does, and he engages in some oratory, and he says, "These, I love my hands." He says, "These hands build bridges, and they write novels, and they heal the sick, and they hit homeruns, and they change the course of history." And Lucy says, "They have jelly on them." And that's our life, isn't it? That's how it often is. Ahud's hands have something other than jelly on them, as he makes his escape. He's a, well, he's a nobody that God raises up. He's a figure that you might want to consider as someone who needed help, unable to use his right hand, and God places him in a position to restore what Aglon, the king of Moab, and Aglon, the king of Moab, represents evil. It represents opposition, opposition to the kingdom of God, opposition to the people of God, opposition to the covenant of God. I imagine in a society in which we live where there is confusion about what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is evil, how evil should be treated and so on. We are here, as so often in the Old Testament, in a theocracy. We are in a position of what we might call the just war. It was the great Augustine, Saint Augustine, who wrote a treatise on the just war, what is needed for war to be just. And without these principles, the war is unjust. So there's just war and there's unjust war. An ethical issue, of course, God gives to his people, to the children of Abraham, the promised land. And that promised land is currently occupied by a whole slew of clans. We call them the Canaanites, but they're made up of all kinds of people. Moab is to the east of the River Jordan. But to occupy this land that God had given would involve water, inevitably so. And without a belief that this is God's command, the whole thing becomes an ethically difficult issue to deal with. There's a text, a recurring text, that the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full. God says this to Abraham, that the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full. But there comes a tipping point when the iniquity of the Canaanites, or the Amorites, is full. It has reached such a degree of malevolence and evil that God says enough. And he comes in his righteous judgment using instruments like a hood, this left-handed judge, the second judge in their history, to do something that, well, this is not a story that you'd read to your children at bedtime, perhaps. They would have all sorts of questions, and the answers would be difficult, perhaps, to provide in all honesty. But this is history. This is the history of the people of God. This is the history of the Church. And when we think of Ahud slaying Eglon, the king of Moab, and the graphic detail of the dung coming out on the floor, this is part of the way God delivered his people. It was precisely what Israel needed at that time. This was no time for a peacemaker. This was a time of war. There was a declaration of war against those who would try to destroy the people of God. Well, there are going to be more or less, less, less messy characters in our study, but this is definitely one of the messiest in the history of Israel. That was Derrick Thomas from his new series, Who Are They? Lesson-known Characters of the Bible. And I appreciated Dr. Thomas' comments today that most of our Christian lives have messy aspects to it. How a story like that of Ahud helps us honestly assess how the Lord works through and uses fallen, sinful, and complicated people. This new series is 12 Messages, and you can gain access to all 12 of them right now when you give a donation in support of Renewing Your Mind at RenewingYourMind.org, or when you call us at 800-435-4343. In addition to the series and study guide being unlocked in the Ligonier app, we'll also send you a Renewing Your Mind notebook for all of your outlines, quotes, and notes as you listen to this series, other series on Renewing Your Mind, and perhaps the sermon on Sundays. Simply donate at RenewingYourMind.org or use the link in the podcast show notes to request this week's resource offer. And if you live outside of the U.S. and Canada, this series and study guide is waiting for you at RenewingYourMind.org/global. Thank you for fueling this outreach day in and day out, and your gifts in December, especially additional gifts, are so appreciated as they help us reach our fundraising needs for the year and enter 2026 in a posture of strength with outreach momentum for the year ahead. You may have heard of the prayer of Jebes, but who was Jebes really, and what can we learn from his prayer. Don't miss Wednesday's episode here on Renewing Your Mind. you