Judges 3:21

And Ehud put forth his left hand, and took the dagger from his right thigh,.... Being, as before observed, a lefthanded man; Jude 3:15, and this he could the better do, without being taken notice of

And Ehud put forth his left hand, and took the dagger from his right thigh, and thrust it into his belly: No JFB commentary on these verses.

Judges 3:21 And Ehud put forth his left hand, and took the dagger from his right thigh, and thrust it into his belly:Ver. 21. And thrust it into his belly.] This he did by an extraordinary call from God; and therefore this example was traitorously misapplied to Ravillas, that desperate assassin, who murdered the French king by the instigation of the Jesuits, and defended it when he had done. Our own chronicles tell us of one Birchet in Queen Elizabeth’ s reign, who by the example of Ehud, thought he might lawfully have killed a great personage in this kingdom, whom he took to be God’ s enemy. Upon the same account he wounded Hawkins, and slew his keeper. The Janizaries have learned of the Jesuits the art of king killing: but to preserve him from harm by strangers, they allow none to come into the presence of the grand signior, but first they search him that he have no weapon; and so clasping him by the arms under colour of doing him honour, dissemblingly bereave him of the use of his hands, lest he should offer him any violence. And thrust it into his belly.] Eglon stabbed into the guts, finds his bane the same way with his sin. It was good counsel that one gave Henry IV of France, after that he had been first stabbed in the mouth and lost a tooth only, to take heed he denied not God with his heart, as he had already done with his mouth where now he was wounded, lest the next stab were to the heart, as indeed it proved. Camden’ s Elisab, 174. Turk. Hist.

(21) Thrust it into his belly.—This would involve certain, though not necessarily instant death. Josephus says, inaccurately, that he stabbed him to the heart (Antt. v. 4, § 2). The assassination is exactly similar to that of Henry III. of France, by the Dominican monk, Jacques Clement, who had provided himself with a commission from a friend of the king: “On Tuesday, Aug. 1, at 8 a.m.,” says L’Estoile, “he was told that a monk desired to speak with him. The king ordered him to be admitted. The monk entered, having in his sleeve a knife, unsheathed. He made a profound reverence to the king, who had just got up, and had nothing but a dressing-gown on, and presented him despatches from the Comte de Brienne, saying that he had further orders to tell the king privately something of importance. Then the king ordered those who were present to retire, and began reading the letter. The monk, seeing his attention engaged, drew his knife from his sleeve, and drove it right into the king’s small gut, below the navel, so home that he left the knife in the hole.”—Guizot, “Hist. of France,” iii. 479.

12–30. Ehud delivers Israel from Moab The story of Ehud is furnished by the editor with an introduction (Judges 3:12-15 a) and conclusion (Judges 3:30) in his usual manner. The narrative thus enclosed is one of the oldest in the Book; it has the freshness and vigour which belong to the best style of Hebrew story-telling. Traces of editorial interference may perhaps be detected here and there, Judges 3:19-20; Judges 3:22-23; Judges 3:27-28 are taken by some to be doublets; but the narrative as a whole (Judges 3:15-29) is homogeneous. The Moabites, whose territory lay on the E. of the Dead Sea and reached northwards probably to the fords of the Jordan, had crossed the river, occupied Jericho, and reduced the Israelites of the neighbourhood. The Benjamites were the principal sufferers; and it was the Benjamite hero Ehud who, by a clever and courageous stratagem, freed his countrymen from the tyrant. By the Dtc. compiler the subjugation and deliverance are extended so as to affect all Israel.