Judges 3:16

3:16 Ehud made himself a sword – it had two edges and was eighteen inches long. ¹  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 ²  belly.

Judges 20:16

20:16 Among this army ³  were seven hundred specially-trained left-handed soldiers. ⁴  Each one could sling a stone and hit even the smallest target. ⁵ 

Judges 3:15

3:15 When the Israelites cried out for help to the Lord, he ⁶  raised up a deliverer for them. His name was Ehud son of Gera the Benjaminite, a left-handed man. ⁷  The Israelites sent him to King Eglon of Moab with their tribute payment. ⁸ 

[3:16]  ¹ 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.

[3:21]  ² tn Heb “his”; the referent (Eglon) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[20:16]  ³ tn Heb “And from all this people.”

[20:16]  ⁴ tn Heb “seven hundred choice men, bound/restricted in the right hand.” On the significance of the idiom, “bound/restricted in the right hand,” see the translator’s note on 3:15.

[20:16]  ⁵ tn “at a single hair and not miss.”

[3:15]  ⁴ tn Heb “the Lord.” This has been replaced by the pronoun (“he”) in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[3:15]  ⁵ 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.

[3:15]  ⁶ tn Heb “The Israelites sent by his hand an offering to Eglon, king of Moab.”