Judges 3:10-26

¹⁰Yahweh's Spirit came upon him, and he became their leader. He led an army that fought against the army of Cushan, and defeated them.

¹¹After that, there was peace in the land for forty years, until Othniel died.

¹²After that, the Israelis again did things that Yahweh said were very evil. As a result, he allowed the army of King Eglon, who ruled the Moab area, to defeat the Israelis.

¹³Eglon persuaded the leaders of the Ammon and Amalek people-groups to join their armies with his army to attack Israel. They captured Jericho, which was called ❛The City of Palm Trees❜.

¹⁴Then King Eglon ruled the Israelis for eighteen years.

¹⁵But then the Israelis again pleaded to Yahweh to help them. So he gave them another leader to rescue them. He was Ehud, a left-handed man, the son of Gera, from the descendants of Benjamin. The Israelis sent him to King Eglon to give him their yearly protection money.

¹⁶Ehud had with him a double-edged dagger, about a foot and a half long. He strapped it to his right thigh, under his clothes.

¹⁷He gave the money to King Eglon, who was a very fat man.

¹⁸Then Ehud started to go back home with the men who had carried the money.

¹⁹When they arrived at the stone carvings near Gilgal, he told the other men to go on, but he himself turned around and went back to the king of Moab. When he arrived at the palace, he said to the king, “Your majesty, I have a secret message for you.” So the king told all his servants to be quiet, and sent them out of the room.

²⁰Then, as Eglon was sitting alone in the upstairs room of his summer palace, Ehud came close to him and said, “I have a message for you from God.” As the king got up from his chair,

²¹Ehud reached with his left hand and pulled the dagger from his right thigh, and plunged it into the king's belly.

²²He thrust it in so far that the handle went into the king's belly, and the blade came out the king's back. Ehud did not pull the dagger out. He left it there, with the handle buried in the king's fat.

²³Then Ehud left the room. He went out to the porch. He shut the doors to the room and locked them.

²⁴After he had gone, King Eglon's servants came back, but they saw that the doors of the room were locked. They said, “The king must be defecating in the inner room.”

²⁵So they waited, but when the king did not open the doors of the room, after a while they were worried. They got a key and unlocked the doors. And they saw that their king was lying on the floor, dead.

²⁶Meanwhile, Ehud escaped. He passed by the stone carvings and arrived at Seirah, in the hilly area where the descendants of Ephraim lived.