Blog

by Katie Erickson

This week’s passage is rather lengthy, but it’s really a great story! Make sure to read it here before continuing on with this blog post.

Again we see that “the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord” (verse 12). We can look at this from our perspective and be amazed that they just didn’t learn their lesson from what they’ve been through so far. But, if we take a good look at ourselves, we’ll see that we really don’t learn this lesson either!

Because of this continued sin, “The Israelites were subject to Eglon king of Moab for eighteen years” (verse 14). In the previous passage, they only had 8 years of slavery; now God has bumped that up to 18 years. Perhaps they need longer periods of slavery to get the point across that they shouldn’t keep disobeying God.

Again the people of Israel cried out to God, and God gave them a deliverer named Ehud (verse 15). The story of how Ehud killed Eglon, king of Moab, is a pretty interesting one, and perhaps not what you’d expect to read in the Bible! King Eglon was not a small man, in fact he was rather large. Ehud tells Eglon that he has a message from God for him, but instead of a verbal message, he whips out his sword and plunges it into the king’s belly! King Eglon is so obese that the sword is completely swallowed up by his fat, even down to its handle. The passages tells us that his sword was about a cubit long, which is about 18”. Just picture that for a moment - an 18” sword being completely swallowed up by a man’s fat! Yikes. Needless to say, Ehud left his sword there and fled the scene.

Nobody else was in the room at the time Ehud killed Eglon, so after a while Eglon’s servants started to get concerned. They honestly thought the king may be in the bathroom! So after waiting “to the point of embarrassment” (verse 25), they finally unlocked the doors, went in, and saw the scene.

After Ehud delivered Israel from Eglon king of Moab, they experienced peace for 80 years. They had slightly longer slavery this cycle than last, but they also had twice as long of a period of peace as well.

While the story of Ehud killing Eglon is an entertaining one to us, it really does have a point. The people of Israel keep messing up and God gives them negative consequences for that, but He still continues to save them. But, He doesn’t save them until they realize their mistakes. The same is true for us. We need to realize what we’re doing wrong, be truly sorry for it, turn away from our mistakes, and turn toward following God before He will save us. Do the people of Israel deserve God’s salvation? Do we deserve God’s salvation? No to both of those. But that’s what God’s grace is - a gift that we do not deserve.

It’s important to note that as amazing as God’s grace is, we don’t have permission to keep sinning because of grace (Romans 6:1-2). Our motivation needs to be such that we are truly trying to honor and obey God, not that we’re sinning because we know we have a “get out of jail free” card. When we mess up and are truly sorry for it, God will always save us, just as He continued to do for the people of Israel throughout the book of Judges.

This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration.  All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved.  Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.