Vulg.), since אטר signifies clausit (shut) in Psa 69:16. It is merely with reference to what follows that this peculiarity is so distinctly mentioned. - The Israelites sent a present by him to king Eglon. בידו does not mean in, but through, his hand, i.e., through his intervention, for others were actually employed to carry the present (Jdg 3:18), so that Ehud merely superintended the matter. Minchah, a gift or present, is no doubt a euphemism for tribute, as in 2Sa 8:2, 2Sa 8:6; 1Ki 5:1.
Verse 16
Ehud availed himself of the opportunity to approach the king of the Moabites and put him to death, and thus to shake off the yoke of the Moabites from his nation. To this end he provided himself with a sword, which had two edges (פּיות from פּה, like שׂיו, Deu 22:1, from שׂה), a cubit long (גּמר, ἁπ. λεγ., signified primarily a staff, here a cubit, according to the Syriac and Arabic; not “a span,” σπιθαμή, lxx), and “did gird it under his raiment upon his right thigh.”
Verse 17
Provided with this weapon, he brought the present to king Eglon, who - as is also mentioned as a preparation for what follows - was a very fat man.
Verses 18-20
After presenting the gift, Ehud dismissed the people who had carried the present to their own homes; namely, as we learn from Jdg 3:19, after they had gone some distance from Jericho. But he himself returned from the stone-quarries at Gilgal, sc., to Jericho to king Eglon. הפּסילים מן refers to some place by Gilgal. In Deu 7:25; Isa 21:9; Jer 8:19, pesilim signifies idols. And if we would retain this meaning here, as the lxx, Vulg., and others have done, we must assume that in the neighbourhood of Gilgal there were stone idols set up in the open air-a thing which is very improbable. The rendering “stone quarries,” from פּסל, to hew out stones (Exo 34:1, etc.), which is the one adopted in the Chaldee, and by Rashi and others, is more likely to be the correct one. Gilgal cannot be the Gilgal between Jericho and the Jordan, which was the first encampment of the Israelites in Canaan, as is commonly supposed, since Ehud passed the Pesilim on his flight from the king's dwelling-place to the mountains of Ephraim (Jdg 3:26, Jdg 3:27); and we can neither assume, as Bertheau does, that Eglon did not reside in the conquered palm-city (Jericho), but in some uncultivated place in the neighbourhood of the Jordan, nor suppose that after the murder of Eglon Ehud could possibly have gone from Jericho to the Gilgal which was half an hour's journey towards the east, for the purpose of escaping by a circuitous route of this kind to Seirah in the mountains of Ephraim, which was on the north-west of
