Episode 85: Ehud delivers a message from God

(Judges 3)

The nations God didn't drive out

3 ^1-5 These are the nations that God left to test Israel to find out whether they would obey him: the Philistines, Canaanites, Sidonians, Hivites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, and Jebusites.

⁶ The Israelites intermarried with the people of these nations and served their gods.

Othniel delivers Israel from Chushanrishathaim

⁷ The Israelites did evil in the sight of the Lord and served Baalim and the groves.

⁸ So God was angry and sold them to Chushanrishathaim, the king of Mesopotamia, for eight years.

⁹ When the Israelites cried out to God, he selected a deliverer, Othniel, Caleb's nephew.

¹⁰ The Spirit of God came upon Othniel and God delivered Chushanrishathaim into his hand.

¹¹ And there was peace for forty years. Then Othniel died.

Ehud delivers a message from God

¹² The Israelites did evil in the sight of the Lord.

¹³ God punished them by strengthening Eglon, the king of Moab, who smote Israel, with the help of the Ammonites and Amalekites, and possessed the city of palm trees.

¹⁴ And the Israelites served Eglon for eighteen years.

¹⁵ Then they cried out to God, and God sent them a deliverer named Ehud, who was a left-handed Benjamite.

¹⁶ Ehud made a two-edged, cubit-long dagger, which he hid under his clothes next to his right thigh.

¹⁷ Ehud then brought a present to Eglon, who was a very fat man, and said,

¹⁹ I have a message to you from God.

²¹ Then he took the dagger with his left hand and thrust it into Eglon's belly.

²² The dagger's handle went in after the blade and the fat closed in around it, so that Ehud couldn't pull it out. And the dirt came out.

²³ Ehud locked the door to Eglon's room.

²⁴ When the servants found the locked door, they said,

King Eglon is covering his feet in his summer chamber.

²⁵ After they got over their embarrassment, the servants found a key to open the door, and saw that King Eglon was dead.

God delivers 10,000 lusty Moabites

²⁶ After killing King Eglon, Ehud blew a trumpet on the mountain of Ephraim, and all the Israelites descended the mountain with him. ²⁸ Ehud said to them,

Follow me because God has delivered the Moabites into your hand.

²⁹ And the Israelites killed about 10,000 men, all lusty men of valor. Not a single man escaped.

³⁰ And there was peace for 80 years.

Shamgar kills 600 with an ox goad

³¹ Sometime after that, Shamgar killed 600 Philistines with an ox goad.