Jericho. Gilgal is more likely to be Geliloth, which was on the west of Jericho opposite to the ascent of Adummim (Kaalat ed Dom), on the border of Judah and Benjamin (Jos 18:17), and which was also called Gilgal (Jos 15:7). Having returned to the king's palace, Ehud sent in a message to him: “I have a secret word to thee, O king.” The context requires that we should understand “he said” in the sense of “he had him told” (or bade say to him), since Ehud himself did not go in to the king, who was sitting in his room, till afterwards (Jdg 3:20). In consequence of this message the king said: הס, lit. be silent (the imperative of הסה fo); here it is a proclamation, Let there be quiet. Thereupon all who were standing round (viz., his attendants) left the room, and Ehud went in (Jdg 3:20). The king was sitting “in his upper room of cooling alone.” The “room of cooling” (Luther, Sommerlaube, summer-arbour) was a room placed upon the flat roof of a house, which was open to the currents of air, and so afforded a cool retreat, such as are still met with in the East (vid., Shaw, pp. 188-9). Then Ehud said, “A word of God I have to thee;” whereupon the king rose from his seat, from reverence towards the word of God which Ehud pretended that he had to deliver to him, not to defend himself, as Bertheau supposes, of which there is not the slightest intimation in the text.
Verses 21-22
But when the king stood up, Ehud drew his sword from under his garment, and plunged it so deeply into his abdomen that even the hilt followed the blade, and the fat closed upon the blade (so that there was nothing to be seen of it in front, because he did not draw the sword again out of his body), and the blade came out between the legs. The last words have been rendered in various ways. Luther follows the Chaldee and Vulgate, and renders it “so that the dirt passed from him,” taking the ἁπ. λεγ. פּרשׁדנה as a composite noun from פּרשׁ, stercus, and שׁדה, jecit. But this is hardly correct, as the form of the word פּרשׁדנה, and its connection with יצא, rather points to a noun, פּרשׁדן, with ה local. The explanation given by Gesenius in his Thes. and Heb. lex. has much more in its favour, viz., interstitium pedum, the place between the legs, from an Arabic word signifying pedes dissitos habuit, used as a euphemism for anus, podex. The subject to the verb is the blade.[1]
Verse 23
As soon as the deed was
- ↑ At any rate the rendering suggested by Ewald, “Ehud went into the open air, or into the enclosure, the space in front of the Alija,” is untenable, for the simple reason that it is perfectly irreconcilable with the next clause, “Ehud went forth,” etc. (consequently Fr. Böttcher proposes to erase this clause from the text, without any critical authority whatever). For if Ehud were the subject to the verb, the subject would necessarily have been mentioned, as it really is in the next clause, Jdg 3:23.
