Left-handed Son of a Benjaminite
Judges 3
12 After the death of Othniel, the Israelites fell back into their evil sinful ways, so the Lord decided to teach them a lesson. 13 He allowed King Eglon the Moabite to team up with the Ammonites and Amalekites, and invade Israel.14 After King Eglon had ruled over Israel for eighteen years, the Israelites cried out to the Lord for help. 15 The Lord responded by sending them a judge, a left-handed son of a Benjaminite named Ehud.
When it came time for Israelites to make a tribute to King Eglon, Ehud made preparations to take him down. 16 He strapped a sword to his right thigh and hid it under his clothing. 17 ‘I’m gonna skewer that fat pig!’ he said to himself.
18 Ehud marched ahead of four men carrying a large chest of glazed pastries for the gargantuan king. Just beyond the stone statues of Gilgal, they met with King Eglon, who was being carried in a sedan chair by twelve burly slaves.
‘Ooh, doughnuts!’ squealed the king, and he began to stuff his face.
19 When the king had gorged himself, Ehud dismissed his men and followed him to the throne room of his palace. He leaned in to him and whispered, ‘How about you and me get some alone time, big boy?’
‘Leave us!’ called Eglon to his attendants.
And they were alone.
20 Ehud drew close to the king, and he told him, ‘I have something in my pants that you’ll find very interesting.’
The king’s eyes grew wide and he rose. 21 Ehud reached and drew his sword, and before Eglon could say, ‘Why the fuck do you have a sword?’ 22 he’d plunged it into the king’s belly so deep that even the handle sank in after the blade.
Eglon mewled with pain, and he gasped, ‘I guess this means there’ll be no sexy time…’ He slumped over and breathed his last.
Ehud struggled, but he couldn’t pull the sword out; the fat had completely closed over it. It continued to engulf his arm, and then his shoulder. He put his foot on the king’s belly to free himself, and he pushed with all his might, eliciting a loud fart from the corpse. He tried one more tug and managed to extract his arm, causing a torrent of shit to flow out. Soon he was awash in blood, viscera, and excrement.
23 As he looked down at his sodden clothes, he let out a sigh. Today just hadn’t turned out as he’d hoped. He left his sword inside the sopping corpse of the king, walked out onto the porch, locked the doors of the throne room, and left.
24 Just then, the king’s servants tried to enter the throne room, but found the doors locked. One said to the other, ‘The fat bastard’s probably taking a shit again,’ and so they waited.
25 After an hour, they were really starting to worry, so they broke down the door with such force that one of them landed in the congealed remains of the king.
‘This job doesn’t pay enough,’ he sighed.
26 Meanwhile, Ehud had reached Seirath in the hill country of Ephraim. 27 He blew his trumpet to signal to the Israelite army, who came barrelling down the hill to meet him. 28 ‘Follow me!’ he commanded. ‘The Lord has given us victory!’
‘Why do you smell of poo?’ asked one of the soldiers.
‘Sod off!’ he retorted.
29 Ehud and his army seized the fords of the Jordan, and then continued on to Moab. They slew ten thousand Moabites that day and took possession of the land. 30 And so, with the Moabites benevolently enslaved by the Israelites, there was peace in the land for eighty years.
