Last week instead of a sermon, I told the story of Joseph, who was sold into slavery by his brothers but ended up saving his family and the Jewish people. I told it because I noticed that the story was almost completely cut from the lectionary. All we heard was the beginning and the end. It made me wonder – what other stories do we never hear in church because the Lectionary skips them? I realize that chopping the bible up into 156 readings means that you have to leave some parts out, but it doesn’t mean that we should never hear them either.
So, today I am going to tell one of my favorite stories from the Bible. Its from the book of Judges. Now, here’s the 2 cent overview of the book of Judges. Israel gets itself into some trouble, usually because they’ve turned away from God. They cry out to God, and he sends them a “Judge”, which is in the form of a leader who leads Israels armies to victory over whoever it was that had taken them over. Things go well for a while, and then they fall away and the whole thing repeats.
Judges Chapter 3:7-8 is a perfect and short version of this cycle:
The People of Israel did evil in God’s sight. They forgot their God and worshiped the Baal gods and Asherah goddesses. God’s hot anger blazed against Israel. He sold them off to Cushan-Rishathaim king of Aram Naharaim. The People of Israel were in servitude to Cushan-Rishathaim for eight years.
The People of Israel cried out to God and God raised up a savior who rescued them: Caleb’s nephew Othniel, son of his younger brother Kenaz. The Spirit of God came on him and he rallied Israel. He went out to war and God gave him Cushan-Rishathaim king of Aram Naharaim. Othniel made short work of him.
The land was quiet for forty years. Then Othniel son of Kenaz died.
Nearly all of the stories start and end the same. “The people of Israel did evil in God’s sight” (then there is the Judge and it ends with “The land was quiet for x years”
So, forty years after Othniel, “the People of Israel went back to doing evil in God’s sight. So God made Eglon king of Moab a power against Israel because they did evil in God’s sight. He recruited the Ammonites and Amalekites and went out and struck Israel. They took the City of Palms. The People of Israel were in servitude to Eglon fourteen years.”
I want to pause here, because there is another important part of this story, also not told in the Lectionary, that gives insight into what is going on here. We hear of the Moabites and Ammonites many times in the Bible and they’re always giving Israel trouble. And its interesting because of their roots. To go into sermon mode here for a minute, I’ll say this. Many times, what is born out of sin – even though it may seem like a good idea at the time, can come back to haunt you over and over. And that’s what the Moabites and Ammonites are for Israel. Two people groups, born out of sin who were a thorn in the side of Israel for generations.
Back in Genesis, when God had decided to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah because of their wickedness, only Lot and his family escapes. Lot’s wife, unfortunately, doesn’t make it, but Lot and his daughters make it into the mountains and are hiding out in a cave.
So, “One day the older daughter said to the younger, “Our father is getting old and there’s not a man left in the country by whom we can get pregnant. Let’s get our father drunk with wine and lie with him. We’ll get children through our father—it’s our only chance to keep our family alive.”
So they do this. And they both have kids. The older daughter has a son that she names Moab, the ancestor of the present-day Moabites. The younger daughter had a son and named him Ben-Ammi, the ancestor of the present-day Ammonites.”
So, these conquerors, who have taken over the Israelites are really only around because of some else’s lack of faith or disobedience to God.
Anyway, The People of Israel cried out to God and God raised up for them a savior, Ehud son of Gera, a Benjaminite. He was left-handed. The People of Israel sent tribute by him to Eglon king of Moab. Ehud made himself a short two-edged sword and strapped it on his right thigh under his clothes. He presented the tribute to Eglon king of Moab. Eglon was grossly fat.”
Ok, a couple of things here. One, we notice that Ehud is a Benjamite, from the tribe of Benjamin – the youngest son and brother of Joseph that we talked about last week.
Also, he is left-handed. Every left handed person mentioned in the bible is from the tribe of Benjamin, which is super ironic because the name Benjamin means “son of my right hand”. What does that mean? I don’t know, but now you know.
The next thing to note here is how Bible translators describe Eglon:
Judges 3:17 - (NIV) “He presented the tribute to Eglon king of Moab, who was a very fat man.”
(NASB) “...Now Eglon was a very fat man”
(The Message) “Eglon was grossly fat”
(KJV) “...and Eglon was a very fat man”
the way I’ve always told the story before, this becomes a comical issue, but while in seminary I did a paper on Ehud and found out something interesting.
The Hebrew text of this passage reads “And he brought the - gift to Eglon king of Moab, and Eglon very healthy man”
To quote my paper here: The term in question here is bari), which in each of those texts above is( בריא translated “fat”. Lawson Stone did an extensive study on this word and found many interesting things. “A בריא simple review of the mere fourteen occurrences of discloses not a single example of obesity. In Genesis 41 the term appears seven times denoting the seven “fat” cows and “fat” ears of corn of Pharoah’s dreams.” (Stone 651) To compare, the NIV translates them as “Seven cows, sleek and fat”(Gen. 41:2) and “seven heads of grain, healthy and good” (Gen. 41:5). The ESV uses the words “attractive and plump” (v2) and “plump and good” (v5). Neither terms seem to suggest “very fat” or “grossly fat”. They seem to refer to good, big and healthy.
So, it might be better to think of Eglon more as Michael Duncan Clarke from The Green Mile than Jabba the Hutt.
Either way, he was a big dude.
After Ehud finished presenting the tribute, he went a little way with the men who had carried it. But when he got as far as the stone images near Gilgal, he went back and said, “I have a private message for you, O King.”
This is another important key to the story that you might miss if you don’t know the background. Gilgal, where he stops and turns around here, is a special place for the Israelites. When Joshua leads the people into the promised land after wandering for 40 years, he first has them erect stone monuments, one for each tribe for them to remember what had happened there. When Ehud gets here, he sees instead the idols that Eglon has erected in their place and he gets mad and decides to go back. Presumably to finish the job he had set out to do in the first place since he already had a sword strapped to his thigh. So, he goes back to the king and tries to get him alone.
Ehud walked over to Eglon, who was sitting alone in a cool upstairs room. And
Ehud said, “I have a message from God for you!” As King Eglon rose from his seat, Ehud reached with his left hand, pulled out the dagger strapped to his right thigh, and plunged it into the king’s belly. The dagger went so deep that the handle disappeared. So Ehud did not pull out the dagger, and the king’s bowels emptied. Then Ehud closed and locked the doors of the room and escaped down the latrine.
Alright, things have gotten real messy here. Really messy. Ehud stabs the king in the belly, so deep his sword probably came out of his back and severed his
spinal cord, which kept him from calling out. Also, his bowels emptied, which means he, uh... pooped himself, ok? This detail is important in a minute. But first, Ehud escapes down the latrine. Through the toilet and down through the sewers. Pretty gross.
When the servants came, they saw with surprise that the doors to the rooftop room were locked. They said, “He’s probably relieving himself in the restroom.”
Probably from the smell!
They waited. And then they worried—no one was coming out of those locked doors. Finally, they got a key and unlocked them. There was their master, fallen on the floor, dead!
While they were standing around wondering what to do, Ehud was long gone. He got past the stone images and escaped to Seirah. When he got there, he sounded the trumpet on Mount Ephraim. The People of Israel came down from the hills and joined him. He took his place at their head.
He said, “Follow me, for God has given your enemies— yes, Moab!—to you.” They went down after him and secured the fords of the Jordan against the Moabites. They let no one cross over.
At that time, they struck down about ten companies of Moabites, all of them well-fed and robust. Not one escaped. That day Moab was subdued under the hand of Israel.
The land was quiet for eighty years.
In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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