Ehud the Left-Handed

A cool upstairs room in a palace. A king sits alone. A visitor steps close and says quietly, “I have a message from God for you.” The king rises from his seat. And everything in Israel is about to change.

After Joshua died, a pattern began. Israel would forget God and go after other gods. Trouble would come. The people would cry out. And God would send someone to rescue them. The Bible calls these rescuers judges. This time the trouble is Eglon, king of Moab, east of the Jordan. With help from the Ammonites and Amalekites, he crosses the river and takes the City of Palms, the old site of Jericho. For eighteen long years, Israel has to pay him tribute.

Then the people cry out to the Lord, and the Lord raises up a deliverer. His name is Ehud, son of Gera, from the tribe of Benjamin. And the Bible makes a point of one detail. Ehud is left-handed. Israel chooses him to carry the yearly tribute to King Eglon. But before he goes, Ehud makes himself a short, double-edged sword, about the length of a forearm, and straps it under his clothes on his right thigh.

At the palace, Ehud presents the tribute to Eglon, who the Bible tells us was a very heavy man. Then Ehud and his porters set off for home. But near Gilgal, at the place of the carved stones, Ehud sends the others on and turns back alone. He walks back into the palace. “I have a secret message for you, O king.” The king says, “Quiet!” and all his attendants leave the room. Now it is just the two of them, in the king's cool upper room.

“I have a message from God for you,” says Ehud. Eglon rises from his seat. Ehud reaches with his left hand, draws the sword from his right thigh, and strikes once. The oppressor of Israel falls, and does not rise again. Ehud steps out through the porch, shuts the doors of the upper room behind him, and locks them.

The servants come back and find the doors locked. They look at each other. “He must be relieving himself in the cool room,” they whisper. So they wait. And wait. They wait until they're embarrassed. Finally, they find a key and open the doors, and there is their master, lying dead on the floor. By now Ehud is long gone. He has slipped past the carved stones and escaped to the hill country of Ephraim.

There Ehud blows a trumpet, and the Israelites come streaming down from the hills behind him. “Follow me! The Lord has given your enemies, the Moabites, into your hand!”

They race down to the Jordan and seize the shallow crossing places, the fords, so that the Moabite soldiers can't get back across the river to home. Not one escapes. That day Moab was brought under Israel's hand. And the land had peace for eighty years.

Here's the twist hidden in Ehud's name tag. He's from the tribe of Benjamin, and Benjamin means son of the right hand. Yet this son of the right hand is left-handed. Later in Judges, the tribe of Benjamin is said to have seven hundred chosen left-handed men who could sling a stone at a hair and not miss. Many commentators also point out that most fighters wore a sword on the left side, to draw with the right. A blade strapped to the right thigh might easily be missed.

Ehud the Left-Handed. You'll find it in Judges chapter 3, verses 12 to 30. When Israel cried out, God answered with someone nobody would have picked, and used the very thing that made him different. So here's the question to carry with you. What is it about you that seems odd or small, that God might want to use?