Judges 3 Study Notes

3:1-6 All the various inhabitants of the land of Canaan were intended to serve as a testing ground for God’s people. The list in v. 3 encompasses the whole of the promised land: the southwest (Philistines), northwest (Sidonians), northeast (Hivites), and southeast (Canaanites). The Lord allowed these peoples to remain in the land to enable his people to learn warfare and to see the Lord’s faithfulness first hand, as well as to test their commitment to serve him alone. But they failed the test. Intermarriage was strictly forbidden (Dt 7:3; Jos 23:12).

3:7-11 The judgeship of Othniel sets the pattern against which to compare all of the subsequent judges. Here Baal is linked with his more common consort in Canaanite literature, Asherah, rather than Astarte (see note at 2:6-13). Asherah was a fertility goddess often represented in the form of a tree. As a result of Israel’s unfaithfulness, the Lord handed them over into the power of an oppressor, Cushan-rishathaim (“Cushan the Doubly Evil”). The area of Aram of the Two Rivers (v. 8) was north of Israel in Mesopotamia (Gn 24:10). For an Aramean king to oppress the whole land of Israel as far south as Judea was a mark of his military might. After eight years of subjugation, Israel cried out to the Lord, who then raised up and empowered Othniel, who as Caleb’s nephew (see Jos 15:17) had the credentials to deliver Israel (Jdg 3:9-10; see note at 1:12-13). After delivering Israel, Othniel continued to lead them, and Israel was at peace for forty years. However, after his death, the cycle of sin and judgment started all over again.

3:12-14 This time the enemy was King Eglon of Moab, with the assistance of the Ammonites and Amalekites. These tribes lived east of Israel, in Transjordan, so the City of Palms (Jericho) would have been a natural base from which to govern their conquered territory. It took longer than during the first cycle for Israel to learn their lesson: they endured eighteen years of suffering before they cried out for release.

3:15-17 When Israel cried to the Lord, he again provided a deliverer, Ehud, a left-handed man. Left-handedness seems to have been relatively common among Benjaminites (20:15), which is ironic since Benjamin means “son of the right hand.” The unusual idiom used here (lit “hindered in the right hand”) suggests that left-handedness may have been viewed as a defect and that Israel’s second deliverer lacked the perfect appearance of the first. Ehud also adopted a different approach to delivering Israel, assassinating the oppressor through deceit and cunning rather than engaging in straightforward battle. For that task, he made a relatively short sword and hid it on his right thigh, the opposite side from that preferred by a right-handed man. Eglon’s name means “calf,” a feature that resonates with the emphasis throughout the narrative on his “fatness.” This was normally a positive characterization in the OT, where physical size was evidence of great wealth. Together with Eglon’s name, however, it marked him out as the fattened calf, ripe for slaughter.

3:18-23 Ehud had been sent to Eglon to deliver Israel’s tribute to the oppressor, a task that he completed and then returned to Israelite territory. Significantly, the landmark that identified Israelite territory was the carved images near Gilgal, a telling pointer to the state of Israelite worship in those days. Ehud then dismissed the rest of his party, returning alone to meet with Eglon. He appealed to Eglon’s vanity by claiming I have a secret message for you. The Hebrew word translated “message” can also mean “word” or “thing.” The original readers would have recognized the nature of the “secret” long before Eglon got the point. Once alone, Ehud delivered God’s “message” for Eglon by running him through with the concealed sword. Apparently, Eglon was so fat that the entire eighteen inches, including the handle, could be contained by his belly. The waste came out, a final humiliation for Israel’s defeated enemy.

3:24-26 The dimwittedness of Eglon’s servants would have been humorous to the first readers of Judges. The odor might have contributed to the servants’ supposition that the king was “occupied.” The contents of their master’s bowels were indeed being emptied, but not in the manner they imagined.

3:27-30 Ehud then sounded the ram’s horn, summoning Ephraim to holy war against the leaderless Moabites. He gave due credit to the Lord’s involvement in the battle, and he led his people in a successful assault on the fords of the Jordan. This would have cut off the Moabite retreat and separated them from any possible reinforcements. About ten thousand. . . able-bodied . . . Moabites may be a way of affirming an overwhelming victory, according to the conventions of ancient literature. The result of the victory was eighty years of peace.

3:31 This brief note introduces Shamgar, sometimes called a “minor judge,” though never explicitly said to judge Israel. His name is extraordinary on two counts: the form “Shamgar” is not that of a normal Hebrew name, and the ascription son of Anath suggests that he was (or had been) a follower of Anath, the Canaanite goddess of war. This foreigner apparently delivered Israel by striking down six hundred Philistines with an oxgoad. The Philistines, or Sea Peoples, were not native to Canaan but arrived there in the twelfth to eleventh centuries BC from Anatolia and Crete. From their bases in the coastal plain, the Philistines became an increasing problem for the Israelites as they pressed eastward into the foothills of Israel. A cattle prod was a sharp stick up to eight feet long tapering to a sharp point, which may have been tipped with metal (1Sm 13:21). This is the first in a series of unusual instruments of deliverance in the book of Judges—from Jael’s hammer (Jdg 4:21), to Gideon’s pitchers and torches (7:19-20), to Samson’s donkey jawbone (15:15).