Judges 3 (Part 2) Bible Study / Podcast

Just a quick review from last time. We were introduced last week to our first judge. So the first judge in the book is a man named Othniel. Othniel, verse 10, says the Spirit of the Lord came upon him and he judged Israel.

And the empowerment that God gave him was to make war. So the judges were basically military men, although there is one female judge. But the judges were men like regional governors slash military leaders.

They were empowered by God to lead the nation. And the judges were like Joshua, most of them. They were warriors. So that was true with Othniel, and now it's going to be true with the next judge, a man named Ehud.

So now in the remaining chapters, or excuse me, the remaining verses of chapter 3, we learn about the next two judges, actually, Ehud and then Shamgar. And this story about Ehud and how he kills Eglon, the king of Moab.

This is probably one, this is one of those stories where if you've heard it once, you'll probably remember it. And we'll see why in just a moment. But let's read through this section. Judges 3, 12 through 31.

And the children of Israel again did evil in the sight of the Lord. So the Lord strengthened Eglon, king of Moab, against Israel, because they had done evil in the sight of the Lord. Then he gathered to himself the people of Ammon and Amalek, went and defeated Israel, and took possession of the city of Palms.

So the children of Israel served Eglon, king of Moab, eighteen years. But when the children of Israel cried out to the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer for them. Ehud, the son of Gera, the Benjamite, a left-handed man.

By him the children of Israel sent tribute to Eglon, king of Moab. Now Ehud made himself a dagger. It was double-edged and a cubit in length, and fastened it under his clothes on his right thigh. So he brought the tribute to Eglon, king of Moab.

Now Eglon was a very fat man, and when he had finished presenting the tribute, he sent away the people who had carried the tribute. But he himself turned back from the stone images that were at Gilgal.

I have a secret message for you, O king.

Keep silence. And all who attended him went out from him. So Ehud came to him. Now he was sitting upstairs in his cool private chamber.

I have a message from God for you.

So he arose from his seat. Then Ehud reached with his left hand, took the dagger from his right thigh, and thrust it into his belly. Even the hilt went in after the blade, and the fat closed over the blade, for he did not draw the dagger out of his belly.

And his entrails came out. Ehud went out through the porch and shut the doors of the upper room behind him and locked.

Them.

When he had gone out, Eglon's servants came to look, and to their surprise, the doors of the upper room were locked.

So they said,.

He's probably attending to his needs in the cool chamber.

So they waited till they were embarrassed, and still he had not opened the doors of the.

Upper room.

Therefore they took the key and opened them, and there was their master, fallen dead on the floor. But Ehud had escaped while they delayed, and passed beyond the stone images and escaped to Sera. And it happened when he arrived that he blew the trumpet in the mountains of Ephraim, and The children of Israel went down with him from the mountains, and he led them.

Then he said to them,.

Follow me, for the Lord has delivered your enemies, the Moabites, into your hands.

So they went down after him, seized the fords of the Jordan leading to Moab, and did not allow anyone to cross over. And at that time they killed about ten thousand men of Moab, all stout men of valour, not a man escaped.

So Moab was subdued that day under the hand of Israel, and the land had rest for eighty years. After him was Shamgar the son of Anath, who killed six hundred men of the Philistines with an ox's goad. And he also delivered Israel.

Okay, so like I said, if you have heard this story about Ehud before, it's probably sounding familiar. What does he do? He stabs this fat king, this very large, the Bible really says he's very fat. He stabs this king right in the stomach with his dagger, and the fat closes over the blade.

Not a story you're likely to forget. Some people, with this kind of thing, this is what brings these arguments that people, when they think of the Old Testament, they think of stories like this, gruesome stories, fighting, warfare, bloodshed.

And the misconception a lot of people have because of stories like this is, yeah, that's the way it was in the Old Testament, but when they think of the New Testament, Jesus comes and it's all peace and love and stuff like that.

So the Old Testament is violent and gruesome and bloody, but the New Testament is just so much better and has all these words and teachings about love. Well I've heard that repeated so many times, or some variation of that.

Back in the Old Testament, people say God was angry and he commanded and approved of things like this, but in the New Testament, God is more loving. That's the idea that so many people have, and of course that's not true.

Both Old and New Testaments say about the Lord that he does not change. So the same God of the Old Testament, he's the same right now. One of the attributes of God is that he is immutable. Malachi 3 verse 6 says, I am the Lord, I change not.

Hebrews 13 verse 8 says, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. So if you have the idea that there's a lot of wrath in the Old Testament, but the New Testament is all about love and that's how you think of the Bible, it's broken down like that, that's really not accurate.

As a matter of fact, the most wrath and the most bloodshed is in the book of Revelation, and that's most certainly the New Testament. So even though this is a kind of caricature people have in their mind, something that gets repeated often, it's simply not true.

But let's face it, the Old Testament is a lot bigger, there's a lot more content, Israel is a physical nation, they fight physical battles, so yes, you do run into a lot more stories like this in the Old Testament.

So that's true, but let's go through these things and see what we can learn. But my main point in that is that God is the same, and God was loving back then, but he had wrath back then. Just like today, God is still loving today, but he still has wrath today.

So don't ever get the idea that God was one way back then, and he's different now, because that's simply not the case. Let's go through these verses, Judges chapter 3, starting in verse 12, it says,. And the children of Israel again did evil in the sight of the Lord.

So the Lord strengthened Eglon king of Moab against Israel, because they had done evil in the sight of the Lord. Now it doesn't explain what Israel did, but we can assume it was similar to the last time.

Because this is what keeps happening again and again. Israel likely intermarried and intermingled with the heathen tribes that they had left in the land. So by doing that, when they intermarry, they began to adopt the heathen practices.

And once they adopt the heathen practices, then they eventually adopt the heathen gods or the false gods. So what did the Lord want from his people? He wanted his people to remain separate. Israel was to be a holy nation.

That is, they were to be set apart. So when they began to form families with the people of this world, what are they doing? They're blending holy with unholy. So now you have a mixture. And the good doesn't make the corrupt better, as much as the bad just corrupts the good.

So when God's standards are not being upheld in the land, and everyone is living in this pattern of rebellion to the Lord, after a while it just becomes normal and it gets worse and worse. So at that point, bowing down to an idol, you figure they've gone this far, why not?

So that's what would happen in Israel. As soon as they started to intermarry with the Canaanite tribes, they would adopt their practices and their gods. What does the scripture teach? That a little leaven leavens the whole lump.

Once you allow one thing, it becomes easier to bend on the next thing. And eventually it begins to snowball. It's like the saying goes, sin takes you further than you want it to go, keeps you longer than you want it to stay, and costs you more than you want it to spend.

So Israel falls into this pattern. They are punished by God. God allows Eglon, the king of Moab, to defeat them. Eglon is likely the successor to Balak, if you remember in the book of Numbers, that Balak, with the assistance of the false prophet Balaam, had led Israel into idolatry in the previous generation.

So now it's just happening all over again. But here's the interesting thing. It says that the Lord raised up Moab. It says that the Lord gave Eglon his strength. So what do you have? You have God strengthening the Moabite king against his own people.

Let me repeat that. You have God strengthening what is really an evil king to oppress God's own covenant.

People.

That's a new thought for some people. God would never do that against his own people. Doesn't God love Israel? Why would he strengthen their enemies against them? That's just not the concept of God that most people have.

But of course, if you believe in the sovereignty of God and you read and study the scriptures, you know that the Lord does this thing all the time. If a nation becomes powerful, it's because God either strengthened them or at the very least you would say that God allows it.

But what does the scripture say? Okay, here, he strengthened the king of Moab. Daniel chapter 2 verse 21 says that the Lord removes kings and he raises up kings. In Romans 9, 17, it records what the Lord said to Pharaoh, king of Egypt, says for this very purpose.

So God speaking to Pharaoh says for this very purpose, I have raised you up that I may show my power in you and that my name may be declared in all the earth. So this also happens in the book of Habakkuk.

The prophet can't understand why God isn't doing anything about Israel's rebellion. And then the Lord tells the prophet, no, I'm actually going to do something. I'm going to raise up Babylon or the Chaldeans against you and they're going to come in and devastate your land.

So while the Lord has gone the more cataclysmic route in the past with raining fire and brimstone down on, say, Sodom and Gomorrah, this is normally how God works. When God wants to punish a nation or when he chooses to punish his people, Israel, usually what he does is he will raise up another nation to punish them.

Okay, so let's make modern application. Let's just say, hypothetically, that God wanted to punish the United States of America. How does God usually work? Well, he would raise up an enemy to oppress us.

That's what you see here. I'm not saying that is happening or is going to happen, but that's the kind of thing that God does. Verse 13 says,. Then he, the king of Moab, gathered to himself the people of Ammon and Amalek, and went and defeated Israel, and took possession of the city of Palms.

I had said before that the city of Palms is likely a reference to Jericho. We learn this from Deuteronomy 34 verse 3. It identifies the city of Palms as either Jericho or the plain of the Valley of Jericho, so that general area.

Verse 14 says,. So the children of Israel served Eglon, king of Moab, for eighteen years. But when the children of Israel cried out to the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer for them, Ehud, the son of Gera, the Benjamite, a left-handed man.

So this is the second judge of Israel, a man named Ehud. And it said last time in our first part one study of Judges 3, it said that the term deliverer is a synonym for savior. So they were a type of Christ in the sense that they were the savior of the nation.

So this is the second judge of Israel. We only get a few details about him. What do we know about Ehud? Number one, he is from the tribe of Benjamin. And number two, he was a left-handed man. Why that is pointed out, I'm not exactly sure.

Some translate this to mean that he was ambidextrous, meaning that he was just as strong and capable with his left hand as he was with his right. And if that was the case, that is certainly a unique talent, unique enough to record.

So I would tend to think that's why it's mentioned. But it does play into the story. It does give details about how he grabs his dagger. But verse 15 tells us that the children of Israel sent Ehud on a journey to give tribute to the king of Moab.

So in this situation, Ehud is sort of acting like an ambassador. Clearly, he was a very important man in Israel, and he's showing up, delivering a gift to.

The king.

So he's giving tribute. That means he's giving the king a gift. Now the gift, the real gift was a dagger in his stomach. But it says that he fastened it on his right thigh. One would assume, since most people are right-handed, if he was armed, if Ehud was armed, I looked it up, 90 of people are right-handed.

So if he had a weapon, most, well, the Moabites would have assumed that it would have been on his left hip, but he's actually got it secured on his right thigh. So I guess that's why it's mentioned, his being left-handed, it plays into how he concealed his weapon.

But he gets close to the king. How does he do this? He hides the weapon, and he gets close to the king by saying, I have a secret message.

For you, O king.

And the king tells him basically to keep quiet, shut up. And he sends everybody out of the room, so the king doesn't want anyone else to hear. Who knows, maybe he thinks Ehud is on his side, and he's delivering some sensitive information.

Maybe he thinks he's a spy. We don't really know. But to some degree, Eglon must trust Ehud enough to allow him to be alone with him. This is a very bad decision, obviously, because Ehud doesn't really have a secret message.

He is there to assassinate the king of Moab. Verse 20, so Ehud came to him, and it says, now he was sitting upstairs in his cool private chamber, then Ehud said again, I have a message from God for you.

So first, it's a secret message. Now it's a secret message from God. So this sounds even more interesting. So the king, it says, arose from his seat. So if Eglon was interested before, he's even more interested now.

And the fact that he lets down his guard, he must, for some reason, either trust Ehud, perhaps they have a relationship already, we don't really know, but it appears that the king regards Ehud as a prophet.

And really, this is what Ehud is claiming. He's claiming to have a message from God. What does he say in verse 19, is it? Or verse 20? I have a message from God for you. So Ehud is claiming to be a prophet.

And this is when, verse 21, he reached with his left hand, took the dagger from his right thigh and thrust it into his belly. And it says, even the hilt went in after the blade. Now nothing in the Bible is incidental, accidental, or coincidental.

It's giving this detail for a reason, that the hilt went in after the blade. So the whole dagger is just inside of him. And then it says the fat closed over the blade. Why does that matter? Because when his servants finally come into the room, they don't see the dagger.

So they don't know that he was murdered. And then it says that Ehud did not draw the dagger out of his belly. And basically, his guts all started to spill out everywhere. I mean, I guess that would be an indication he was killed, but they don't know, apparently.

They don't figure out what's going on. So because they were left alone, Ehud, now he can escape. He locks the door. After doing this, he locks the door. He escapes with no one seeing him. And the king's servants, it says, they assume that because he's staying in the room for so long, he is basically attending to his needs.

So in other words, he's just in the bathroom taking a long time. That's another way. That's a euphemism for saying, and being such a large man, it would have taken him a long time to do anything. So they think he's just taking a long time in the bathroom.

And who knows how long Ehud has to escape, but he has plenty of time. And when they finally come in, they find their king dead on the floor, and they don't know what has happened. So Ehud, this gives, point is, it gives Ehud all the time in the world to make his way, because the door's locked, to Ehud makes his way back to Israel or back to safe territory.

Mission accomplished. The king is dead. Now before we move on, there's an important question that comes up. I think it's come up already, and I forget when we talked about this last, but it's going to come up again.

Just because the Bible records a man of God doing something, it doesn't necessarily mean that God told him to do it, or that God approves of him doing it. The moral question here is not so much that Ehud kills the king, because the judges are portrayed in the Bible as heroes.

The question is, was it justified for him to lie? So this is a question I know we, at Morse Corner Church on Wednesday night, when we studied the book of Joshua, and we looked at Rahab hiding the Israelite spies, we talked.

About this.

Is it ever acceptable to lie? And most people just say no, but don't we see that again? Isn't Ehud lying to the king of Moab? So that's kind of the moral question that comes up. Now again, people might think that the fact that he just murdered the guy, that would be the moral question, but it's not.

This is war. There is a time for peace, the Bible says, and a time for war. It's true. The Bible says thou shalt not kill. That is one of the Ten Commandments, but really the commandment is thou shalt not murder.

This is not, it does not fall under the category of murder. We don't have time to get into the explanation of that, but this is warfare. Just like a nation today, we honor our soldiers, even though they kill people, right?

I know there's still going to be people who don't like that and don't do that, but this has been throughout history. Soldiers kill people in war and whatever a person thinks of it, you cannot deny that the New Testament book of Hebrews chapter 11, it honors many of the judges of Israel who killed people.

Samson, for example, Samson is a hero in the Bible. Ehud here is a hero. He is a national hero of Israel and his greatest feat was assassinating the king of Moab. So the moral question is not him killing Eglon.

The moral question that has been debated is, was it acceptable or is it ever acceptable to lie? Now, I know there's going to be people listening who stumble over this, so you're not going to hear me come out and say that, yes, sometimes it's okay to lie.

I'm not, you're not going to get me to say that. However, we will look at what the scripture says. From what I understand, many religions have some teaching on this. The Jews apparently have a thing where they believe it's okay to lie to Gentiles.

Muslims believe it's acceptable to lie to infidels. And of course, I'm sure there would be people in those religions who would deny that and say it's not okay. But you know, there's at least two examples in scripture where the people of God lie and they are portrayed as doing the right thing.

And I'll explain that in a second. Again, the average Christian struggles with this. They have a simplistic understanding. They say, well, if the commandments say thou shall not bear false witness, therefore it's never acceptable to lie.

No exceptions. And generally I would agree with that. However, here you see Ehud deceiving Eglon. He says he has a secret message from God and that's an excuse to get near the king to stab him in the stomach.

And there's no comment, now fair, there's no commentary in the Bible that God said he should do it or that God was pleased or that God was displeased. Fair enough. But he's clearly being pictured in a positive light.

Certainly, here are the two examples where it was acceptable to deceive someone. The parents of Moses had to deceive and disobey Pharaoh when they hid Moses. Remember when he was a baby? Pharaoh said all the boys, all the baby boys were to be killed, thrown into the river.

And yet the parents of Moses had to lie to the Egyptian officials and they were right in doing that. And then Rahab is most certainly praised when she lied to hide and protect the Israelite spies. So all of that to say this, while I don't want to come out and say that sometimes it's okay to lie, clearly there are at least two examples in the scripture where it was acceptable to lie.

Rahab is certainly an exception, the parents of Moses, and maybe even Ehud here when he lies to the king of Moab. The most common example people give today, that okay, yes, maybe in some circumstances it would be okay to lie, is during, you think of during World War II when people were hiding Jews to protect them.

If the Nazis came and knocked on their door and asked them if they knew of anyone who had Jews or hiding Jews, can you direct us to find any Jews? Nobody I know would argue that it would be the right thing to do to tell the Nazis the truth and hand over the Jews to execution.

I don't know anyone who would argue for that. I think just about everybody would agree in a situation like that, it would be the right thing to do to lie to those evil men. So that is one of those rare exceptions where lying would be acceptable.

And it may be acceptable here in Judges chapter three. Or I guess the other possibility is that God actually did give him a message and then Ehud whispered the message and then stabbed him. So that I guess both could be true, but clearly he tells them, he tells the king that I have a secret message for you.

This is all, this is all a scheme to get close to him, whisper in his ear, and that's when he kills him.

Okay.

So this, this type of question or these types of questions of morality and right and wrong, they do come up, especially in the book of Judges. There's going to be another, this is probably the most troubling story in all of the Old Testament that we're going to get to in a month or two.

Is it ever acceptable to break a vow to God? Those of you who know the story of Jephthah and the vow that he took, and it seems that he kept his vow. So we're going to have to deal and grapple with this again.

Is it ever okay to kill? Well, in the Bible there, there's a time of peace, Solomon writes in a time of war. So the answer would be yes. Um, in the law of God, when a person murdered, what was the penalty?

Well, they were to be put to death. So the Bible teaches the death penalty. So is there an exception?

Yes.

With the death penalty. Is there an exception for lying again, parents of Moses, Rahab? So yes. And is it ever acceptable to break a vow before God? That one seems to be no, because Jephthah keeps his vow.

But again, that's, that's another story that we're going to get to eventually. But those of you who know the story of Jephthah, uh, these are some really hard questions that.

Come up.

All right.

So we'll get to that eventually. But as for this chapter, Ehud, he isn't a bad guy. Ehud is a hero. He's one of the judges. He's a national hero.

Why?

Because he assassinated the king of Moab and he led the military. And it says that they killed 10 ,000 men of Moab. So Ehud escapes. And this is clearly, this whole thing is planned because there are troops nearby.

Verse 27 says, and it happened when he arrived that he blew the trumpet in the mountains of Ephraim. So the children of Israel went down with him from the mountains and he led them. So Ehud, what did he do?

He assumed the leadership. He and his soldiers killed about 10 ,000, it says, men of Moab. And the scripture tells us this was no small thing because the men of Moab were 10 ,000 stout men. So these are some of their strongest men.

And this was a battle that would and did go down in history. And there was a happy ending. Verse 30, so Moab was subdued that day under the hand of Israel and the land had rest for 80 years. So this is all a good thing.

Again, if you read the Bible, you struggle with stories like this. Most people have a simplistic understanding of the Bible. Everything's black and white. Thou shall not kill means you should never kill no matter what.

Never.

There's never any exception. That's simply not true. You should never lie. Well, 99 .9 of the time, yeah, obviously you shouldn't lie. Lying is wrong. But are there those rare exceptions? Yeah, yes, there are.

If you had to lie to save the life of your child, let's say you were living in a nation that was killing Christians and someone was hiding you, you would lie. So Rahab is a hero for lying. The parents of Moses were heroes for deceiving and defying the king of Egypt.

So you have to accept that if you believe the Bible. Now, if you just want to believe whatever you want to believe, that's another story. But these are some things that we don't normally talk about. So it comes out in this book, especially the book of Judges.

So what have we looked at so far? The first judge was Othniel. After his victory, Israel had rest for 40 years. The second judge is Ehud. After his victory, they had rest for twice as long, 80 years. And now to close the chapter, you see the third judge, a man named Shamgar, and we get even less information about him.

Shamgar, we get one verse. So let's read verse 31. We'll look at Shamgar and then we'll bring this study to a close. Judges 3 verse 31 says, After him, that is after Ehud, was Shamgar the son of Anath, who killed 600 men of the Philistines with an ox goad, and he also delivered Israel.

He's mentioned one time in passing in Judges chapter 5 verse 6. But really all we know about Shamgar is who his father was and that he killed 600 men of the Philistines. And again, it's presenting him as a hero.

He killed 600 men, therefore, he's a great man. He's a great Israelite warrior. The Bible is praising him. Now it says he killed 600 men with an ox goad. What is an ox goad? An ox goad is a long stick with a sharp tip on the end, you know, meant for, you know, what poking cattle to get them to move, I guess, right?

An ox goad. So this statement about Shamgar would remind us that he killed 600 men with this strange. This isn't even a weapon. This isn't a weapon of war. Well, this should remind you of who? It should remind you of Samson, who killed 1000 Philistines with the jawbone of an ass.

So Shamgar killed 600 Philistines with an ox goad. Samson kills 1000 Philistines with a jawbone of a donkey. So like, you know, the prophets are categorized major prophets and minor prophets. If Samuel was, or excuse me, if Samson was a major judge, maybe you could consider Shamgar a minor judge, because again, we don't know hardly anything, just one verse, but minor or not, Shamgar accomplished something for the Lord, again, as New Testament Christians.

And if you have this kind of false dichotomy that God was one way in the Old Testament and a different way in the New Testament, then, you know, maybe these stories kind of are unsettling for you, but you have to take the Bible at face value.

Shamgar was a great man of God.

Why?

Because he killed 600 enemy soldiers. He killed 600 Philistines. So what's the point? What's the takeaway? What's the application? In the grand scheme of things, Shamgar seems like an unimportant figure, but what did he.

Do?

He made a difference. And the scripture honors him as a servant of the Lord. And I'll close with what Matthew Henry writes about this. He says that God raised up Shamgar to deliver them, having neither sword nor spear.

However, he took an ox goad, the instrument next at hand. God can make those serviceable to his glory and to his church's good, whose birth, education, and employment are mean and obscure. It is no matter what the weapon is, if God directs and strengthens the arm, often he works by unlikely means that the excellency of the power may appear to be of God.

So in conclusion, Shamgar seems like a man that nobody knows, nobody cares about, but he served God with what he had. And the application for you is whatever, wherever God has put you, whoever you are, whatever you have, you can serve God with what you got.

So will you do that?

All right.

So these are some interesting stories we're reading in Judges chapter three. Next time, we're going to look at Judges chapter four, which starts out with the story of Deborah, the only female judge in Israel.