Judges 3:16-26 God’s Word pierces as a two-edged sword!

 16Now Ehud had made for himself a double-edged sword a cubit long. He strapped it to his right thigh under his cloak 17and brought the tribute to Eglon king of Moab, who was an obese man.

18After Ehud had finished presenting the tribute, he ushered out those who had carried it. 19But upon reaching the idols near Gilgal, he himself turned back and said, “I have a secret message for you, O king.”

“Silence,” said the king, and all his attendants left him.

20Then Ehud approached him while he was sitting alone in the coolness of his upper room. “I have a word from God for you,” Ehud said, and the king rose from his seat.

21And Ehud reached with his left hand, pulled the sword from his right thigh, and plunged it into Eglon’s belly. 22Even the handle sank in after the blade, and Eglon’s fat closed in over it, so that Ehud did not withdraw the sword from his belly. And Eglon’s bowels emptied. 23Then Ehud went out through the porch, closing and locking the doors of the upper room behind him.

24After Ehud was gone, Eglon’s servants came in and found the doors of the upper room locked. “He must be relieving himself in the cool room,” they said. 25So they waited until they became worried and saw that he had still not opened the doors of the upper room. Then they took the key and opened the doors—and there was their lord lying dead on the floor.

26Ehud, however, had escaped while the servants waited. He passed by the idols and escaped to Seirah.

These verses explain a biblical event that are very detailed with commentary from historical commentators that is rich and I thought it was best to give you in its entirety. Blessings 

Guzik’s Commentary:

a. He brought the tribute to Eglon king of Moab: Israel had to pay this tribute money because they were under the domination of the king of Moab. Ehud came to Eglon as a messenger or courier.

i. “Since the payment was carried by a number of men, it may have been food or wool.” (Wolf)

ii. “Presents, tribute, etc., in the eastern countries were offered with very great ceremony; and to make the more parade several persons, ordinarily slaves, sumptuously dressed, and in considerable number, were employed to carry what would not be a burden even to one. This appears to have been the case in the present instance.” (Clarke)

b. I have a message from God for you: Ehud certainly told the truth when he said this. The message was, “Those who oppress the people of God touch the apple of His eye and will be judged for it.”

i. F.B. Meyer set forth some thoughts from Judges 3:20, and Ehud’s statement to Eglon, I have a message from God for you.

· God’s messages are often secret.

· God’s messages must be received with reverence.

· God’s messages leap out from unexpected quarters.

· God’s messages are sharp as a two-edged sword, and cause death.

ii. “God’s Word pierces as a two-edged sword to the dividing of soul and spirit in the recesses of the being, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. When the Eglon of self has received its death-wound, the glad trumpet of freedom is blown on the hills.” (Meyer)

iii. God uses many messengers to speak to us, including death. “Ehud said, ‘I have a message from God for thee.’ It was a dagger which found its way to Eglon’s heart, and he fell dead. So shall death deliver his message to you. ‘I have a message from God unto thee,’ he will say, and ere you shall have time to answer, you shall find that this was the message, ‘Because I the Lord will do this, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel; thus saith the Lord, cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground! Set thy house in order, for thou shalt die and not live.’ Oh! may you hear the other messengers of God before he sends this last most potent one, from which ye cannot turn away.” (Spurgeon)

iv. The preacher should also present the word of God with the sense that he has a message from God. “I am afraid, there are some ministers who hardly think that the gospel is intended to come personally home to the people. They talk, as I read of one the other day, who said that when he preached to sinners he did not like to look the congregation in the face, for fear they should think he meant to be personal; so he looked up at the ventilator, because there was no fear then of any individual catching his eye. Oh! That fear of man has been the ruin of many ministers. They never dared to preach right at the people.” (Spurgeon)

c. Ehud reached with his left hand: Because most men fought with their right hand, it wasn’t expected for a man to use his left hand with a dagger or a sword. This shows how cunning Ehud was and how unexpected the strike was to Eglon.

i. The fat closed over the blade, for he did not draw the dagger out of his belly; and his entrails came out: “This is variously understood: either the contents of the bowels issued through the wound, or he had an evacuation in the natural way through the fright and anguish.” (Clarke)

ii. The phrase and his entrails came out has caused some problems for translators. One of the words used occurs nowhere else in the Old Testament. “The most plausible, if gruesome, suggestion is that it refers to the opening of the king’s body, the downward motion of the dagger being with such force that it passed completely through the abdomen and projected from the vent (cf. RV, it came out behind). Such sensational details have a habit of impressing themselves indelibly upon the human memory.” (Cundall)

iii. “The KJV and RSV translate ‘and the dirt came out,’ implying an intestinal discharge caused by the sword thrust. Koehler-Baumgartner relates the word to the Akkadian parasdinum (‘hole’), meaning that Ehud went out through an ‘escape hole.’ The construction is very similar to ‘Ehud went out to the porch’ in Judges 3:23.” (Wolf)

iv. Some are troubled by this act of assassination; we cannot say that this event is a general approval or commission of those who would assassinate rulers who oppress the people of God. It is significant that this was never suggested or even an issue in the early Christian persecutions. “God did not necessarily approve of the method used by Ehud. It may be significant that the Spirit of the Lord did not come on Ehud and that he was never described as ‘judging Israel.’” (Wolf)

v. Nevertheless, the Bible reliably records this incident without giving specific approval of this act of assassination. “Such incidental details as the length of the murder weapon and the fact of Eglon’s corpulence (mentioned only because the dagger was completely buried in his body) attest to the historicity of the event.” (Cundall)

d. He is probably attending to his needs in the cool chamber: Without being coarse, we can see how real and true-to-life the Bible is. It describes normal, everyday functions but in a dignified way.

i. Attending to his needs is literally “covering his feet,” a euphemism for elimination also used in 1 Samuel 24:3. Some commentators see this only reluctantly: “He has lain down on his sofa in order to sleep; when this was done they dropped their slippers, lifted up their feet, and covered them with their long loose garments. But the versions, in general seem to understand it as implying a certain natural act.” (Clarke)

ii. The stone images mentioned in Judges 3:19 and 3:26 were probably “the actual stones set up by Joshua to commemorate the miraculous crossing of the Jordan (Joshua 4:19-24) and thus were a well-known landmark.” (Cundall)