Judges3chapter 3

Judges 3:1-4

Chapter 2 gave the nations left as a sentence and a test, and verse 2 here adds a purpose that chapter did not state, to teach them war, at the least such as before knew nothing thereof. Exodus 23:29 and 23:30 had given another reason again, that the land not become desolate and the beasts of the field multiply, so Scripture states several purposes for one fact and none of them cancels another. Verse 4 names what the test measures, whether they would hearken unto the commandments of the Lord which he commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses, so the generation of 2:10 that knew nothing is examined on what its fathers were told.

Judges 3:5-6

Six nations are named here where Deuteronomy 7:1 named seven, the Girgashites being the one absent from the list. Verse 6 is Deuteronomy 7:3 carried out clause by clause, thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son. The reason attached to that law at Deuteronomy 7:4 is that they will turn away thy son from following me, and the last words of verse 6 report that outcome in four words, and served their gods.

Judges 3:7-8

This is the second of the seven times the book says Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, after 2:11 and before 3:12, 4:1, 6:1, 10:6 and 13:1. Where 2:13 named Baalim and Ashtaroth, verse 7 names Baalim and the groves, the wooden objects Deuteronomy 16:21 forbids planting near the altar, so the idolatry is described by its furniture as well as by its gods. The first oppressor comes from outside Canaan altogether, from Mesopotamia, which is the country Abraham's servant went back to at Genesis 24:10 and the country Balaam was hired out of at Deuteronomy 23:4.

Judges 3:9-10

Cried unto the Lord falls six times in Judges, at 3:9, 3:15, 4:3, 6:6, 6:7 and 10:10, and this is the first of them. Othniel is already known to the reader from Joshua 15:17 and Judges 1:13, where he takes Kirjath-sepher and marries Caleb's daughter, so the book's first deliverer was introduced two books earlier winning a wife. The Spirit of the Lord occurs at verse 10 for the first time in the whole King James text, checked by query, and it falls seven times in this book, at 3:10, 6:34, 11:29, 13:25, 14:6, 14:19 and 15:14, four of the seven on Samson.

Judges 3:11

The land had rest closes the pattern, and in Judges it falls three times, at 3:11, 3:30 and 5:31, with Joshua 14:15 using the wording first. It stops after Deborah's song and never returns, so the last sixteen chapters run the cycle without the sentence that ends it. Forty years is the wilderness figure of Numbers 14:33, and the verse pairs the rest with the death of the man who won it, which is the arrangement 2:18 said would hold.

Judges 3:12-14

Did evil again is the wording at 3:12, 10:6 and 13:1, so a reader counting the shorter phrase finds four occurrences where the book has seven. The Lord strengthened Eglon, which puts the enemy's rise on the same hand that raises the deliverer three verses later, and 2:14 had said the same thing with the word sold. Moab takes the city of palm trees, which is Jericho by Deuteronomy 34:3 and Judges 1:16, so the first town Israel captured in the land is held by a foreign king, and eighteen years is more than twice the eight of the servitude before it.

Judges 3:15-16

Ehud is a Benjamite and lefthanded, and the Hebrew behind that word describes a right hand that is bound or restricted. The tribe's name means son of the right hand, which Jacob gave him at Genesis 35:18 in place of the name his mother used, so the two facts stand against each other in the original and the English hides it. Lefthanded occurs twice in Scripture and both times of Benjamites, here and at Judges 20:16, where seven hundred of them sling stones at a hair breadth. The dagger of a cubit is girded on the right thigh, which is the side a search would leave alone on a man carrying tribute.

Judges 3:17-19

Eglon was a very fat man is set down before the blade goes anywhere, and at verse 22 that detail is the reason the blade cannot come back out. The quarries by Gilgal are graven images in the Hebrew, standing at the place where Israel first camped in the land and where the messenger of 2:1 came up from. Ehud sends the tribute party away and turns back alone, and the words secret errand are enough to make the king clear his own room.

Judges 3:20-22

I have a message from God unto thee, and the king rises out of his seat, which is the only mark of respect anyone pays in the scene. The account gives the hand, the thigh, the belly, the haft and the fat in a few short clauses, and the King James softens none of it. No command to Ehud is recorded and no word from God about the deed follows it, so the narrative reports the killing without evaluating it, and readers have long divided over whether it is commended or only told.

Judges 3:23-25

Surely he covereth his feet is a euphemism for relieving himself, and the same expression is used of Saul in the cave at 1 Samuel 24:3. The servants tarried till they were ashamed, so their own courtesy toward the king is what buys Ehud the road. Nothing supernatural moves in this escape, and the locked door and the embarrassment of the household do the whole of it.

Judges 3:26-28

The trumpet in mount Ephraim raises a levy rather than an army, since Israel in this book keeps no standing force and every deliverer must call one. What Ehud claims at verse 28 is what verse 10 claimed for Othniel, that the Lord hath delivered your enemies into your hand, and the claim is made before a blow is struck. Taking the fords of Jordan cuts Moab from home, and the same crossings are held against the Ephraimites at Judges 12:5.

Judges 3:29-30

Ten thousand men, all lusty and all men of valour, and there escaped not a man, which is what the seized crossings made possible. Fourscore years is the longest rest recorded in the book, twice the forty given to Othniel, and it is the second of the three times the formula falls. The figures fall from here, since Deborah's rest is forty years at 5:31 and no rest at all is recorded after her.

Judges 3:31

Shamgar gets one verse, with no years counted, no servitude named and no rest, and the book never says Israel cried out before him. The ox goad is a farm implement some eight feet long with an iron point at one end, so the weapon reports what the armouries of Israel held, a state 1 Samuel 13:19 and 13:22 set down plainly a few generations later. He is named once more in Deborah's song at Judges 5:6, where in his days the highways were unoccupied, and the Philistines enter here as the enemy the last third of the book belongs to.