4. Ehud

4. Ehud

“Life’s a hard battle anyway. If we laugh and sing a little as we fight the good fight of freedom, it makes it all go easier. I will not allow my life’s light to be determined by the darkness around me.” Sojourner Truth

My life’s light. I love that. In the Mirror Translation Colossians 3:1 reads:

“Ponder with persuasion the consequence of your co-inclusion in Him. Relocate yourselves mentally. Engage your thoughts with throne room realities where you are co-seated with Christ in the executive authority of God’s right hand.”

We might live in dark and fragmented times, but knowing is all about relocation. What we are has been decided, but as individuals and communities we wander and we wonder and we need to be called back. Sometimes one person can become the voice calling a whole nation so that together we can return.

The delicious story of Ehud in Judges 3 holds a key for us if we want to be that one person, a Sojourner, too.

The context is set for us at the start of the story. This is an again time. Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the lord, again they cried out. (I love that the writer includes the phrase “in the eyes of the lord” so we remember that our definition of evil is not necessarily the same as His…hmm.)

But there’s a gap between the doing evil and the crying out, and the in-between prompted the turning back. See they were as stuck in their agains as we can get, and like us the pain of subjugation prompts a cry for help, but not necessarily a relocation.

“Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD, and because they did this evil the LORD gave Eglon king of Moab power over Israel. 13 Getting the Ammonites and Amalekites to join him, Eglon came and attacked Israel, and they took possession of the City of Palms. 14 The Israelites were subject to Eglon king of Moab for eighteen years.”

The City of Palms was also the city of Jericho, the place of a former battle that they won because they recklessly listened to the instructions God gave them. A place of faith and victory and a Veggie-Tales film. Now Jericho was in Moabite hands, the Israelites were cut off from help, and the land became a place of despair and humiliation. For 18 years they lived with the reminder of what they were and what they had become.

The Israelites were subject to many enemies at this point. All were familiar to them, long-time travelling companions. Some were nations. Most were wounds.

Again they cried out and again God gave them a deliverer. As He does.

And this is where the story gets a little wild. The deliverer is a man called Ehud, a left-handed man from the tribe of Benjamin. It’s my guess at this point that the Spirit of God has been in conversation with Ehud on the quiet. Nothing is recorded in the story, but we read that he had been making an extra-long double-edged sword for some time, enough time that when he was conscripted into the role of tribute-deliverer to the King of Moab he could strap it onto his right thigh. Left-hand, right thigh, double-edged sword: a man with a plan.

So, off Ehud travels with his posse of tribute carriers and the gift is given to Eglon King of the Moabites, who we are told, was a man of significant girth. Job done, home they go, but Ehud isn’t finished yet. He sends the muscle home, and, turning back at Gilgal seeks out a one-to-one with the King.

On arrival, alone in the enemies camp, he appeals to the arrogance of the King Eglon announcing that he has brought a secret message for the King from God Himself.  Eglon sends his attendants and his caution out of the room and leans in to listen, at which point I’ll switch to the text because you can’t write this any better:

“20 Ehud then approached him while he was sitting alone in the upper room of his palace and said, “I have a message from God for you.” As the king rose from his seat, 21 Ehud reached with his left hand, drew the sword from his right thigh and plunged it into the king’s belly.22 Even the handle sank in after the blade, and his bowels discharged. Ehud did not pull the sword out, and the fat closed in over it. 23 Then Ehud went out to the porch; he shut the doors of the upper room behind him and locked them.24 After he had gone, the servants came and found the doors of the upper room locked. They said, “He must be relieving himself in the inner room of the palace.” 25 They waited to the point of embarrassment, but when he did not open the doors of the room, they took a key and unlocked them. There they saw their lord fallen to the floor, dead.”

Meanwhile Ehud has escaped. He has defeated his enemy and one of Israel’s enemies. He runs to the hills and takes out his Shofar. Blowing the trumpet loud and clear over his people he releases the sound of deliverance from the other enemies they are subject to: humiliation, despair, fear, apathy, to name a few. FREEDOM! Freed from everything that crippled them for 18 years they rally, and defeat Moab winning for themselves 80 years of peace.

It’s a wonderful and funny story of an engorged king feeding off many things but mainly at this point the inability of Israel to make up its mind about who they were and who God is. If repentance is to change your mind about who God is, I’m not sure that was what their cry signalled, but He takes the tiniest indication from them – and us – that we need Him and He always comes. It hurts my heart to think of it.

Ehud. What was his secret?  If he was the deliverer it must have meant he was not subject to the same enemies as his people. He was prepared and he told no one. It seems he needed no back up and no votes from a friend because inside he knew who he was. The blowing of the Shofar, the sound of deliverance, had mentally relocated the Israelites and they remembered who they were, and who they worshipped. Ehud could blow the Shofar because he hadn’t forgotten. The darkness of 18 years subjugation hadn’t fragmented him. His name means one, single, undivided.

Jesus said of his own that :

“They do not belong to this world any more than I do” John 17:16

Ehud, the deliverer, was surely one of His own and stands in contrast to his people who were co-included but didn’t really believe it. Ehud engaged with a Moabite throne room reality so that his people could engage again with Yahweh, their true King on the only throne that really lasts. They struggled so long with wandering minds, unable to fix their eyes on the One who loved them deeply.

We can read about their battle, and be deeply grateful because we too have a deliverer who has relocated us once and for all, and the shofar has been blown: it is finished.

Knowing this, that it is finished, the battle has been won,  “let’s laugh and sing a little as we fight” because we have been given the mind of Christ.