Judges 3:23

3:23 As Ehud went out into the vestibule, ¹  he closed the doors of the upper room behind him and locked them.

Judges 3:26

3:26 Now Ehud had escaped while they were delaying. When he passed the carved images, he escaped to Seirah.

Judges 4:1

Deborah Summons Barak

4:1 The Israelites again did evil in the Lord’s sight ²  after Ehud’s death.

Judges 3:20

3:20 When Ehud approached him, he was sitting in his well-ventilated ³  upper room all by himself. Ehud said, “I have a message from God ⁴  for you.” When Eglon rose up from his seat, ⁵ 

Judges 3:16

3:16 Ehud made himself a sword – it had two edges and was eighteen inches long. ⁶  He strapped it under his coat on his right thigh.

Judges 3:21

3:21 Ehud reached with his left hand, pulled the sword from his right thigh, and drove it into Eglon’s ⁷  belly.

Judges 3:15

3:15 When the Israelites cried out for help to the Lord, he ⁸  raised up a deliverer for them. His name was Ehud son of Gera the Benjaminite, a left-handed man. ⁹  The Israelites sent him to King Eglon of Moab with their tribute payment. ¹⁰ 

¹ tn Again the precise meaning of the Hebrew word, used only here in the OT, is uncertain. Since it is preceded by the verb “went out” and the next clause refers to Ehud closing doors, the noun is probably an architectural term referring to the room (perhaps a vestibule; see HALOT 604 s.v. מִסְדְּרוֹן) immediately outside the king’s upper chamber. As v. 24 indicates, this vestibule separated the upper room from an outer room where the king's servants were waiting.

² tn Heb “did evil in the eyes of the Lord.”

³ tn Or “cool.” This probably refers to a room with latticed windows which allowed the breeze to pass through. See B. Lindars, Judges 1-5, 144.

⁴ tn Heb “word of [i.e., from] God.”

⁵ tn Or “throne.”

⁴ tn The Hebrew term גֹּמֶד (gomed) denotes a unit of linear measure, perhaps a cubit (the distance between the elbow and the tip of the middle finger – approximately 18 inches [45 cm]). Some suggest it is equivalent to the short cubit (the distance between the elbow and the knuckles of the clenched fist – approximately 13 inches [33 cm]) or to the span (the distance between the end of the thumb and the end of the little finger in a spread hand – approximately 9 inches [23 cm]). See BDB 167 s.v.; HALOT 196 s.v.; B. Lindars, Judges 1-5, 142.

⁵ tn Heb “his”; the referent (Eglon) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

⁶ tn Heb “the Lord.” This has been replaced by the pronoun (“he”) in the translation for stylistic reasons.

⁷ tn The phrase, which refers to Ehud, literally reads “bound/restricted in the right hand,” apparently a Hebrew idiom for a left-handed person. See Judg 20:16, where 700 Benjaminites are described in this way. Perhaps the Benjaminites purposely trained several of their young men to be left-handed warriors by restricting the use of the right hand from an early age so the left hand would become dominant. Left-handed men would have a distinct military advantage, especially when attacking city gates. See B. Halpern, “The Assassination of Eglon: The First Locked-Room Murder Mystery,” BRev 4 (1988): 35.

⁸ tn Heb “The Israelites sent by his hand an offering to Eglon, king of Moab.”