* The text seems to infer (Judges iii. 13-15) that, after
having taken the Oily of Palm Trees, i.e. Jericho (Deut.
xxxiv. 3; 2 Ghron. xxviii. 15), Eglon had made it his
residence, which makes the story incomprehensible from a
geographical point of view. But all difficulties would
disappear if we agreed to admit that in ver. 15 the name of
the capital of Eglon has dropped out.
Ehud the Left-handed concealed under his garments a keen dagger, and joined himself to the Benjamite deputies who were to carry their dues to the Moabite sovereign. The money having been paid, the deputies turned homewards, but when they reached the cromlech of Gilgal,* and were safe beyond the reach of the enemy, Ehud retraced his steps, and presenting himself before the palace of Eglon in the attitude of a prophet, announced that he had a secret errand to the king, who thereupon commanded silence, and ordered his servants to leave him with the divine messenger in his summer parlour.
* The cromlech at Gilgal was composed of twelve stones,
which, we are told, were erected by Joshua as a remembrance
of the crossing of the Jordan (Josh. iv. 19-24).
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin,
from the original in
the Louvre.
“And Ehud said, I have a message from God unto thee. And he arose out of his seat. And Ehud put forth his left hand, and took the sword from his right thigh, and thrust it into his belly: and the haft also went in after the blade; and the fat closed upon the blade, for he drew not the sword out of his belly; and it came out behind.” Then Ehud locked the doors and escaped. “Now when he was gone out, his servants came; and they saw, and, behold, the doors of the parlour were locked; and they said, Surely he covereth his feet in his summer chamber.” But by the time they had forced an entrance, Ehud had reached Gilgal and was in safety. He at once assembled the clans of Benjamin, occupied the fords of the Jordan, massacred the bands of Moabites scattered over the plain of Jericho, and blocked the routes by which the invaders attempted to reach the hill-country of Ephraim. Almost at the same time the tribes in Galilee had a narrow escape from a still more formidable enemy.* They had for some time been under the Amorite yoke, and the sacred writings represent them at this juncture as oppressed either by Sisera of Harosheth-ha-Goyîm or by a second Jabin, who was able to bring nine hundred chariots of iron into the field.** At length the prophetess Deborah of Issachar sent to Barak of Kadesh a command to assemble his people, together with those of Zebulon, in the name of the Lord;*** she herself led the contingents of Issachar, Ephraim, and Machir to meet him at the foot of Tabor, where the united host is stated to have comprised forty thousand men. Sisera,**** who commanded the Canaanite force, attacked the Israelite army between Taanach and Megiddo in that plain of Kishon which had often served as a battle-field during the Egyptian campaigns.
* The text tells us that, after the time of Ehud, the land
had rest eighty years (Judges iii. 30). This, again, is one
of those numbers which represent an indefinite space of
time.
** It has been maintained that two versions are here blended
together in the text, one in which the principal part is
played by Sisera, the other in which it is attributed to
Jabin. The episode of Deborah and Barak (Judges iv., v.)
comprises a narrative in prose (chap, iv.), and the song
(chap, v.) attributed to Deborah. The prose account probably
is derived from the song. The differences in the two
accounts may be explained as having arisen partly from an
imperfect understanding of the poetic text, and partly from
one having come down from some other source.
*** Some critics suppose that the prose narrative (Judges
iv. 5) has confounded the prophetess Deborah, wife of
Lapidoth, with Deborah, nurse of Rachel, who was buried near
Bethel, under the “Oak of Weeping” (Gen. xxxv. 8), and
consequently place it between Rama and Bethel, in the hill-
country of Ephraim.
**** In the prose narrative (Judges iv. 2-7) Sisera is
stated to have been the general of Jabin: there is nothing
incompatible in this statement with the royal dignity
elsewhere attributed to Sisera. Harosheth-ha-Goyîm has been
identified with the present village of El-Haretîyeh, on the
right bank of the Kishon.
It would appear that heavy rains had swelled the streams, and thus prevented the chariots from rendering their expected service in the engagement; at all events, the Amorites were routed, and Sisera escaped with the survivors towards Hazor.