4. “A Secret Message from God” (Judges 3)

Changeless Despair

Why is it that sometimes, even after we’ve recognized something isn’t good for us, we still don’t change? Maybe we entered into the workforce filled with ambition, seeking to make it to the top. But now, some years into it, we see things more clearly; we see how our workaholism is hurting our family, burning out, that it’s not worth it. But yet, we don’t change. Why is that? 

Maybe we have a pattern we really don’t like: when we’re feeling low and aimless, we go online and buy something to give our lives a sense of movement; but it always ends up dissatisfying. And yet, we keep doing that. Maybe when we’re most tired we find ourselves binging Netflix only to wake up more exhausted. When we’re sad we eat too much, or we drink too much, and feel worse after. We know it isn’t good. Why don’t we change?

Or maybe it’s something you want to do but keep failing to do. You want to wake up to pray and spend time in the Bible—you know things would be better if you do; yet every morning the urgent emails and distractions always crowd it out. Why is it that sometimes, even after we’ve recognized something isn’t good for us, we still don’t change?

The very first word of this morning’s passage raises that question for us. In Hebrew, the first word of the opening sentence is “again.” In English, “The people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.” How monotonous. How repetitive. How frustrating. Once again, just like before, the people of Israel did something stupid and wrong. Once again they failed. God had gotten them out of the jam they had put themselves in—after they had abandoned him, when they cried out he had rescued them from enemy nation by empowering Othniel to lead them to victory. For a few decades, everything was great. And then, again, Israel turned away from God and did evil—they turned to other gods. 

Surely people in Israel are smart enough to begin to notice a pattern. You would think that it would start to occur to them that turning toward other gods has not worked out for them. Surely at least some have a sense that this isn’t good for them. And yet they still don’t change. Why?

The reasons behind our repeated failures and Israel’s repeated failures are many— we are in a complex spiritual battle that involves our desires, our bodies, our network of relationships. There’s not just one answer to this. But I think that one key reason they and we keep returning to ways that we know are not good for us is that the forces we face just seem too powerful. 

Maybe you want to get out of this work-life imbalance, but how in the world are you supposed to do that? Maybe you want to change your habits, but who are you fooling? You know that after a little bit of effort, you’re going to go right back to your previous ways. You want to pray, but really, it’s impossible given your particular schedule, or given your personality. It all seems so…inevitable, impossible to do otherwise. 

One of Satan’s most powerful tools is despair, is to convince us that it’s hopeless. That we are victims, and we can’t do anything about it. 

And I wonder if this is also at least part of the reason that Israel keeps returning. For a while, they have the best of intentions. For a while, they have confidence, because of what they have seen God do. But over time, God feels less real, and the forces around them feel more threatening, more powerful, so that it feels like there really is only one choice to make to be sure they can live well, have enough food, be safe. They need to look to these other gods for help again.

12-17: The Way things Seem

And that’s what Israel does—again. If anything, what happens next just reinforces their sense that they are victims to more powerful forces. A powerful king from an idol-worshiping nation is able to defeat them. “Eglon, the king of Moab” enters the scene. There’s a funny thing in this story—it’s almost never just Eglon. Did you notice again and again it’s “Eglon, the king of Moab.” We’re supposed to feel a certain mystique. The name Eglon itself means “calf” as in a young bull, which might not seem that impressive to us. But remember when Israel wanted to make an image of God in the wilderness, what image did they choose? A calf, an image frequently associated with a powerful deity. And hundreds of years later, when they make an image of God again? It will be a calf. Eglon king of Moab is not just majestic, he’s god-like. 

Quite likely that’s how the people of Moab viewed him; that’s how he views himself. And now so it would seem, does Israel. Eglon, king of Moab has absolutely crushed them in war. He brought the might of many allies together with him to invade Israel from the other side of the Jordan river and the Israelite soldiers could do nothing to stop him. Not only did he gain ground, he overwhelmed the defenses of one of their cities and captured it. His power felt inevitable, irresistible, supernatural. And so when he required that the people of Israel treat him like a god—that they serve him, that they bring offerings to him, well, the people of Israel felt like they had no choice. Why try to stand against an unstoppable force, when that would only make you miserable? 

I’ve sought to describe these initial events from the way it would have felt to the people in the moment. But from the outset of the story, we must notice that there is another, perhaps we might say, hidden dimension to what was going on. While the human perspective sees this in terms of military might, notice how our story begins: “the Lord strengthened Eglon, the king of Moab.” Israel would not have recognized this. Eglon or Moab certainly would not have understood it this way. But we get to see that something else is going on.  

Ultimately, we will see, this is what this story is about. There is how things appear and how things really are. And as we come to really understand what’s happening, our passage invites us to laugh. 

Israel in the moment was not laughing. While service to Yahweh brings rest, their service and offering to EGLON KING OF MOAB was utterly enslaving and miserable. The tribute from their crops and livestock that he required was bringing Israel to the point of starvation, even as he ate, well he ate more than enough of their food. And so, somewhere near the end of their 18 years of misery the people of Israel cry out to God. They’re like a gambling addict who only look for help from their parents after they’ve mounted up such a debt that nobody else is willing to loan them a penny. There’s no note of repentance, just helplessness. 

But once again we are invited to see something that would have been hidden to Israel in that moment. We’re told that the Lord, Yahweh, not only hears their cries but he acts, he raises up for them a deliverer, a savior, Ehud. As God is doing this, there is no indication that anybody in Israel knows that this is going on: there are no trumpets announcing Ehud’s greatness, no massive sign in the sky for Israel’s troops to rally around. As Ehud grows up there is nothing about him to mark him out as a Savior. The opposite, in fact. He’s from the tribe of Benjamin, a tribe earlier mentioned for their inability to drive out the enemy, so that’s not promising. And what’s more, he has a disability. It literally says Ehud is restricted in the right hand, quite possibly meaning he had some birth defect or other event in his life that meant he didn’t have full use of his right hand. This is how God “raises up” a Savior: he chooses a tribe who doesn’t know how to fight, and he prepares a man to do this job by giving him a weakness. Not a single person would have been able to see in this moment that God was answering their prayers.

Verse 15 highlights this irony by playing on the fact that Benjamin literally means “son of my right hand.” Savior Ehud is described literally, “A son of the right hand, restricted in the right hand, and into whose hand the sons of Israel sent tribute.” Ehud might not be seen as someone who can do much farming, but at least he can carry the tribute to their overlord. 

But for a third time we encounter a hidden reality: verse 16 tells us that Ehud, perhaps uniquely, does not see Israel’s situation as inevitable. He has in mind a different sort of “tribute” to give their enemy king. He forges a sharp dagger, about 1 foot long, sharp on both sides. Not a weapon for battle—it was an assassin’s blade, designed only for stabbing, short enough to be hidden strapped to his right thigh, where nobody would think of looking. And so this man that God secretly raised up to save Israel, travels to Eglon King of Moab with a second, secret gift to give. 

Together with other servants helping him bring the crops and livestock, Ehud entered into Eglon’s presence to offer tribute. And here, in the last time Ehud’s name appears, he is finally mentioned without is majestic title. As Ehud, God’s man, draws near, we are told, almost as an aside, “Now Eglon was a very fat man.” On one hand, this detail would have been seen by people as a sign of his greatness. Only the wealthy and powerful could eat like that. And yet as we view Eglon for the first time through the eyes of Ehud, it raises a question about how we are to understand the name Eglon, the calf. Is he a sign of god-like greatness? Or is he actually a fattened calf, ready to be slaughtered?  

After Ehud and the fellow Israelites deliver the tribute without incident, they begin to head back to Israelite territory. After an hour’s hike, when they get to the boundary markers, Ehud tells the others, “You keep going, I have to go back and do something.”

And so he returns, all alone, to Eglon’s palace. He is likely met at the gate by guards who already recognize him as the harmless Israelite. Without much thought they usher him upstairs to what’s described as the “cool roof chamber” where the king luxuriously sits on his throne while experiencing the benefit of the breeze off the Jordan river. There are servants standing right next to him, ready to do whatever he wants. There are probably a good number of soldiers standing on each side. At the far back of the room is a closed door that Ehud knows is another sign of wealth: a personal upstairs latrine for the king’s convenience.

In this moment, almost everyone sees things the same way. The people of Israel an hour away who await Ehud’s return expect nothing to change, nothing to get better: their situation is hopeless. The Moabite servants and guards there in the room see what’s obvious: Eglon has all the power. Eglon himself feels invulnerable, god-like especially as he looks upon this Israel cripple. Almost everyone sees things the same way, because it’s obvious right? How could it be otherwise?  

19-25: The Revealing Word

Well, there is one person in the room who sees things differently. As he stands before the king in this place of power, Ehud says to Eglon, literally, “A hidden word from me to you, O king.” And Eglon is intrigued, sure it’s something that will flatter him; perhaps some juicy information that will give him more power. It’s a secret, so he doesn’t want anyone else to hear it. So he sends all the servants, and all the guards out of the room. 

Ehud draws a couple steps nearer now that Eglon is alone, and says carefully, solemnly, “A word of God from me to you.” And now Eglon is almost overpowered by anticipation. He stands forward, on his tip toes, massive stomach now a bit more stretched out as he is filled with readiness to receive this divine message. 

And so, in a blink of an eye, the message from God, the revelation from the true King of the universe comes. With one fluid motion which almost certainly had been practiced at home again and again and again, Ehud takes his left hand, reaches beneath his robes, pulls the dagger from his right thigh and thrusts this secret word from God directly into the enormous gut of this Fat Cow, shoving it in so far that the fat closed in even over the hilt. We might say that in every way, Eglon absorbed this message.

And then, we might also say, the truth came out; as the NIV puts the end of verse 22, “his bowels discharged”: Eglon in his final moments soiled himself. In a very tangible and odorous fashion, God’s revelation broke the spell of lies and made plain what was actually going on. Eglon with his last breaths recognized he was no god. He was a silly, fat man, whose poop stinks like anyone else.

For this secret word from God to be further revealed, Ehud must escape, no easy task. But he has a clear escape plan. He locks the doors the guards and servants are waiting beyond and he leaves via a way that nobody would notice his exit. Some commentators suggest he escaped out of the latrine window and climbed down in a corner of the building that nobody liked to hang around. Having done so, Ehud casually whistles as he walks through the gates, still seen as nothing more than a harmless weakling.  

Ehud needs about an hour before the soldiers of Moab realize they need to go on horseback to try to capture him. And here is where we see the genius in Ehud’s planning. We can imagine the scene outside the door of the cow who once was king. The servants are there waiting, having been sent out, and maybe a few minutes later, they knock on the closed door, try opening it, and notice it’s locked. Then, well, they notice a distinct smell and as it says in our text, they think, “Surely he is relieving himself.” And so they wait. And they wait longer. It says “they waited until they were embarrassed.” They start talking to each other, “How long is he going to take? Should we check in? Do you want to be the one who interrupts our constipated king? Not me.” Finally, “When he still did not open the doors of the roof chamber, the took the key and opened the doors, and literally it says, “And behold, their lord, fallen upon the ground, dead.”

This, you might say, is the second moment of revelation. The people of Moab, so sure of themselves, sure of their god-like leader, now sees their “lord” exposed as a very mortal, and now very stinky man.

By the time this happens, Ehud has already gotten to safety. He quickly travels to a central location surrounded by Israelite villages and he blows the ram’s horn—literally it says he thrust it, using the very same language for when he thrust the dagger. This is his second thrust of the truth of God, this time not to destroy but to save. He startles his unaware people who, really had no idea what was going on—they just thought it was a routine tribute run. Leaders come to him asking what all the commotion is about, and here we have the third moment of what was hidden now being revealed. “Follow after me, for the Lord has given your enemies into your hand.” How surprising. How impossible it would have seemed. How could this be, that a man who seemed to have no form or majesty to look at could come with this good news of salvation? Somehow, in that moment, the spell of the lie was broken amongst God’s people. Town after town came together and, emboldened by Ehud’s strange leadership, they charged. They went past where Eglon’s palace was to the Jordan river and blocked off the escape routes back to safety for the Moabites. And they marched against all the invaders from Moab and wiped them out. And suddenly, to everyone’s shock and wonder, they had rest. They lived happily—if not happily ever after, happily for the next 80 years.

Psalm 126 writes of how, many years later, when the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, their mouths were filled with laughter. And we can only imagine that in this moment, as Israel rejoices in their strange deliverer Ehud, they too would have been laughing. For a story that began as a tragedy of the monotonous, enslaving, inevitable power of sin finished as a comedy. 

In fact it is this laughter that lies near the heart of this passage. Indeed, it is this laughter that is meant to help break the spell for us.

In the moment, the struggles we endure feel anything but funny. And of course at one level they really aren’t. Just as Israel’s idolatry wasn’t funny, and neither was the starvation Israel experienced, or the cruelty of Eglon. Evil itself is awful, it is no laughing matter. The patterns of life that can tempt us and bring us down and enslave us on their own truly can be too big, too powerful, inevitable and hopeless.

But what our passage invites us to see is that, before the presence of God, all of this wrong that seems so strong are in the end a joke. Before God, all of evil’s attempts to thwart God’s plan, all of the spiritual power’s designs to somehow stop God from rescuing a people for himself, all of Satan’s efforts to destroy us and separate us from his love: they’re ridiculous. The rulers of this world might conspire together against God and against his Christ, but he who sits in the heavens laughs, because before him, all the forces of evil are nothing more than an absurd, fattened cow.

God has for us exposed this reality with his even greater hidden, secret Word. Born in weakness, growing up as a peasant, rejected by authorities, Jesus, God’s appointed Savior, appeared weak and defeated. But in his death he thrust a dagger into the very heart of sin, Satan, and death itself. And rising again from the dead Jesus has sounded the trumpet of victory, declaring to us, “Follow after me. For the Lord has given your enemies into your hand.” Follow after me in battle. For what seemed like a tragedy of the inevitability of evil is through God a comedy.

Listen. The point of this is not to say something like, “With God on your side, you will never fail again.” You know that’s not true. I know that’s not true. And this isn’t what God promises. But what he does tell us is that as we face the evil that feels overwhelmingly strong: pain, temptation, danger, demonic powers, nothing will be able to separate us from the love of Jesus. That this God who was so ready to rescue the idolatry-addicted Israel when they cried out: this God who loves us so deeply that he gave his beloved Son; this God is entirely, completely committed to do everything it takes to finish saving us from all evil. Which means we don’t need to look at what we face and be overwhelmed. 

If you have Jesus, you are and will be more than conquerors. If you have Jesus, the battle might feel long, and you will likely at times experience setbacks, but if you have Jesus you will change. You will grow in love and faith and beauty and hope. You don’t need to despair. ON the last day when you see, when you see how small the power evil is compared to the greatness of our God; what’s more, when you see how utterly enormous God’s grace, God’s love for us is, the love that at times seems so invisible in this moment but that is so very real, when you see these things, you will laugh. 

And as we await that day, let’s turn to him. Let’s acknowledge our sins to him, not in hopelessness, but in confidence, knowing that Jesus has defeated our sin and our guilt and that he is ready to come to our aid.