Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch Old Testament Commentary

But when the king stood up, Ehud drew his sword from under his garment, and plunged it so deeply into his abdomen that even the hilt followed the blade, and the fat closed upon the blade (so that there was nothing to be seen of it in front, because he did not draw the sword again out of his body), and the blade came out between the legs. The last words have been rendered in various ways. Luther follows the Chaldee and Vulgate, and renders it "so that the dirt passed from him," taking the ἁπ. λεγ. פּרשׁדנה as a composite noun from פּרשׁ, stercus, and שׁדה, jecit. But this is hardly correct, as the form of the word פּרשׁדנה, and its connection with יצא, rather points to a noun, פּרשׁדן, with ה local. The explanation given by Gesenius in his Thes. and Heb. lex. has much more in its favour, viz., interstitium pedum, the place between the legs, from an Arabic word signifying pedes dissitos habuit, used as a euphemism for anus, podex. The subject to the verb is the blade. (Note: At any rate the rendering suggested by Ewald, "Ehud went into the open air, or into the enclosure, the space in front of the Alija," is untenable, for the simple reason that it is perfectly irreconcilable with the next clause, "Ehud went forth," etc. (consequently Fr. Bttcher proposes to erase this clause from the text, without any critical authority whatever). For if Ehud were the subject to the verb, the subject would necessarily have been mentioned, as it really is in the next clause, Jdg 3:23.)