The assassination hidden in plain sight in the book of Judges

Buried in the early chapters of Judges, long before Samson or Gideon, is one of the
most detailed and least-discussed scenes in the entire Old Testament: a planned, close-range
assassination of a foreign king, carried out by a judge the text goes out of its way to describe as
left-handed.

Israel had been under the rule of Eglon, king of Moab, for eighteen years, paying tribute as a
subject people. Ehud, described specifically as left-handed — or, more literally in Hebrew, “restricted
in his right hand” — was chosen to deliver Israel’s tribute payment to Eglon in person.1
Before he went, he made himself a double-edged sword about a foot and a half long and strapped it to
his right thigh, under his clothing.

The detail matters because Moabite guards, expecting a threat, would have searched a man’s left
side for a weapon — where right-handed men conventionally carried a blade for a quick cross-body draw.
A weapon strapped to Ehud’s right thigh, reachable by his left hand, would have gone unnoticed by
anyone checking the expected side.

Ehud delivered the tribute publicly, then dismissed the men who had carried it with him. On his
way out, he turned back and told Eglon he had a secret message for him alone. Eglon, described as “a
very fat man,” ordered his attendants out of the room. Once they were alone, Ehud said, “I have a
message from God for you” — and as Eglon rose from his seat, Ehud drew the hidden sword with his left
hand and drove it into Eglon’s stomach.2

The text’s description of what happened next is unusually graphic for the period’s narrative
style: the handle went in after the blade, and the fat closed over it, because Ehud did not pull the
sword back out. He left it there, locked the doors of the room behind him, and walked out past
Eglon’s servants, who assumed the king was relieving himself and waited, embarrassed, before finally
breaking the doors down — by which point Ehud had escaped entirely.

Ehud used the delay to rally Israelite forces in the hill country, and led them to seize the fords
of the Jordan, cutting off roughly ten thousand Moabite soldiers from retreat. The chapter closes with
a note that the land had peace for eighty years — one of the longest periods of rest recorded anywhere
in the book of Judges.3

It’s a strange story to find sitting quietly a few chapters before Deborah and Gideon, told with a
level of tactical and physical detail the Bible rarely spends on any single act of violence — and it’s
framed, without apparent discomfort, as an act of deliverance sent by God.