Judges has huge God moments where God shows us that he stays true to his promise to never break
covenant with his people; a key theme of Judges. God does allow his people to
experience the consequences of their unfaithfulness and choices; allowing the
nations and gods they keep choosing over him to dominate and enslave them.
Jesus often does the same with us today; allowing the consequences of our
choices to play out when we choose to listen to other voices, often leading to
hurt, brokenness, and slavery to what had promised us pleasure. Yet Jesus stays
true to his promises and covenant to us, never abandoning us and working
through the Holy Spirit to keep drawing us back to him for healing and hope.
Israel’s first judge Othniel is a powerful warrior, defeating Cushan the Wicked. Israel has peace for 40
years until Othniel dies and Israel begins a new love affair with the nations
around them and their pagan gods, worshipping them alongside God. God allows
King Eglon of Moab to have power over Israel. The Israelites are oppressed for
18 years and then cry out to the Lord for help.
The Lord raises up a deliver for them, a left-handed man from the tribe of Benjamin
named Ehud. In the story of Ehud, there are a number of puns, some crude
humour, and even mockery in this story, beginning with the Lord choosing a
left-handed man from a tribe of Benjamin: Benjamin means “Son of my Right
Hand.” The right-hand side was considered the side of power and privilege. Later
in Judges, we discover that left-handedness is quite common among the people of
Benjamin. It makes me wonder why left-handedness becomes seen as something
wrong or at least undesired. In Matthew, when Jesus talks about the separation
of the sheep and the goats, the goats, those who have not accepted Jesus are
placed to the left, while the sheep are placed on the right, the side of power.
My brother is left-handed and in the Christian school they forced him to learn
to write with his right hand. At the start of this story of deliverance we ask,
why focus so heavily on Ehud left-handedness?
Ehud is sent to take Israel’s tribute to King Eglon of Moab, a humiliating task. Ehud is
resourceful, making a double-edged sword, about 1 1/2 feet long, and straps it
to his right thigh to sneak it past the guards who would have checked out his
right thigh less closely since most people are right-handed and would have
strapped a sword or dagger to their left thigh. The Lord uses Ehud
left-handedness to allow him sneak a sword into the king’s throne room!
To the Israelites, this story is a comedic story of
deliverance. God often mocks those who
serve idols, listen to Isaiah 44, “The blacksmith takes
a tool and works with it in the coals; he shapes an idol with hammers, he
forges it with the might of his arm. He gets hungry and loses his strength; he
drinks no water and grows faint. The carpenter measures with a line and makes
an outline with a marker; he roughs it out with chisels and marks it with
compasses. He shapes it in human form, human form in all its glory, that it may
dwell in a shrine. He cut down cedars, or perhaps took a cypress or oak. He let
it grow among the trees of the forest, or planted a pine, and the rain made it
grow. It is used as fuel for burning; some of it he takes and warms himself, he
kindles a fire and bakes bread. But he also fashions a god and worships it; he
makes an idol and bows down to it. Half of the wood he burns in the fire; over
it he prepares his meal; he roasts his meat and eats his fill. He also warms
himself and says, “Ah! I am warm; I see the fire.” From the rest he makes a
god, his idol; he bows down to it and worships. He prays to it and says, “Save
me! You are my god!” They know nothing, they understand nothing; their eyes are
plastered over so they cannot see, and their minds closed so they cannot
understand. No one stops to think, no one has the knowledge or understanding to
say, “Half of it I used for fuel; I even baked bread over its coals, I roasted
meat and I ate. Shall I make a detestable thing from what is left? Shall I bow
down to a block of wood?” Such a person feeds on ashes; a deluded heart
misleads him; he cannot save himself, or say, “Is not this thing in my right
hand a lie?”
The writer of Judges makes sure to tell his listeners that Eglon’s a very fat man;
a huge obese king sitting on a throne in all his royal finery, like Jabba the
Hut. But Eglon is a very vain king, something very common among powerful rulers.
Ehud arrives with his men, offers the tribute from Israel, leaves with his men,
but then sends his men away while Ehud makes his way back to the king, saying
that he has a secret for the king’s ears alone, so Eglon allows Ehud to come
back in, after-all his guards have already checked him for weapons.
Eglon sends his attendants way and Ehud comes close, “Your Majesty, I have a
secret message from God for you.” Eglon leans forward to get up and
while he’s in this helpless position, hands on the arms of the throne, pushing
his massive body up, Ehud draws his sword from his right thigh and stabs the
very fat king right through the belly. Eglon is so fat that the handle of
Ehud’s sword is swallowed up by the king’s belly. A horrible stink fills the
throne room, as the king’s bowels are unleashed, and he fills his royal robes
with a smelly mess. As the stink fills the room, Ehud escapes through the
porch, locking the doors behind him.
While the Israelites listening to this story of Ehud and Eglon roar with laughter, they laugh even harder
when they hear that the guards come to the door of the king’s throne room, too
embarrassed to knock because it smells like the king is going to the bathroom.
Every child listening to the Jewish elder telling this story of God’s
deliverance is now laughing so hard the tears are flowing from their eyes! Eglon’s
gods can’t save him from a single Jew! How often do today’s false gods seduce
us to worship them alongside God? Whose voices are tickling our ears, what’s
going on in our hearts that causes us to listen to them?
Meanwhile, back at the palace, after a really long
embarrassing wait, the servants
finally get brave enough to unlock the door where they find King Eglon lying on
the floor in his own mess, dead. Ehud escapes and calls the men of Israel to
fight against their oppressors. They take possession of the fords of the Jordan
so that Moabites cannot get reinforcements from home, like what the Ukraine was
doing when they destroyed that Russian bridge going onto the Crimea, making it
more difficult for the Russians to move troops and equipment into the battle
area. The Lord gives Ehud and his men victory, “At that
time they struck down about ten thousand Moabites, all vigorous and strong; not
one escaped.” Moab now becomes subject to Israel, a complete reversal of
Moab’s oppression of Israel. For the Israelites, this is an amazing story of
deliverance through an unlikely deliverer with much laughter directed towards
Israel’s enemies and gods.
The Lord uses an unexpected person to save Israel, a left-handed man from a right-handed tribe. We should
not be surprised that the people we tend to look up to the most, are often not
the ones God uses to accomplish his plans. When the Lord chooses young David
over his older brothers to become the next king of Israel, we’re told that the Lord looks at the heart rather than the looks or
popularity of the person he chooses to accomplish his plans.
God always stays true to his covenant promises to us, yet he will often surprise us in who he works through.
This is part of the reason so few people recognized Jesus when he comes, even
though the prophet Isaiah had told them years earlier that when the Judge comes, “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to
him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and
rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from
whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.” Ehud goes up against Eglon on his own, only
rallying his men behind him after Eglon is dead. Jesus goes up against Satan on
his own, defeating him, not with a sword, but through a completely unexpected
sacrifice on the cross so we can have freedom and life.
It looks like Jesus is totally defeated; it’s only when we come to an empty
grave that we discover that the Lord uses the unexpected to defeat Satan and
keep his covenant to send the world a saviour. We all need saving, we’re often
more like the Israelites than we want to admit, chasing after all the little
gods around us, all the shiny glittery promises our culture promises us if we
only accept their truths over Jesus’ truths and call on our lives. We’re often attracted
to the big, bright, and glitter over the simplicity of loving
God more than anything else and loving our neighbours with sacrificial love.
Paul talks to the church in Corinth in 1 Corinthians
1:26–29,
“Brothers and sisters, think of what you were
when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many
were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish
things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world
to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised
things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no
one may boast before him.” Jesus continues
to use unexpected people and ways to build his kingdom, calling us to follow
him and trust in him alone. If this is hard for you, ask God to give you the
wisdom, the faith, and the strength you need to trust more deeply in him.
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