Now the cycle turns for the first time. God leaves enemy nations in the land on purpose — to test Israel and to teach it — and when Israel fails the test and is sold into servitude, it finally cries out. Three deliverers answer in this one chapter: Othniel, the model judge; Ehud, a left-handed man with a hidden dagger and “a message from God” for a tyrant; and Shamgar, who kills six hundred Philistines with a stick used to drive oxen.
A study in Judges 3 · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 8 min read
To Prove Israel By Them
“Now these are the nations which the LORD left, to prove Israel by them… And they were to prove Israel by them, to know whether they would hearken unto the commandments of the LORD, which he commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses.”
Judges 3:1, 4
The nations Israel failed to drive out are given a second purpose: they become the exam. God uses the very consequence of Israel’s disobedience — the enemies left in the land — to test the next generation’s obedience, and even “to teach them war” (verse 2). A trial permitted is not the same as a trial sent; God works good out of the mess Israel made, without ever having wanted the mess.
The Spirit Of The LORD Came Upon Him
“And when the children of Israel cried unto the LORD, the LORD raised up a deliverer to the children of Israel… even Othniel the son of Kenaz… And the Spirit of the LORD came upon him, and he judged Israel, and went out to war… And the land had rest forty years.”
Judges 3:9-11
Othniel — Caleb’s younger kinsman, last seen taking a city to win a wife (Judges 1:13) — is the pattern deliverer: the people cry, God raises him, the Spirit of the LORD comes on him, he judges and fights and wins, and the land rests. The judges are not self-made strongmen. Each one is a person God takes up and empowers for a task, and the account is careful to say so before it says anything about the battle.
“There was ever a remnant who were true to Jehovah; and from time to time the Lord raised up faithful and valiant men to put down idolatry and to deliver the Israelites from their enemies.”
Ellen G. White · Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 545
I Have A Message From God Unto Thee
“But when the children of Israel cried unto the LORD, the LORD raised them up a deliverer, Ehud the son of Gera, a Benjamite, a man lefthanded… And Ehud said, I have a message from God unto thee. And he arose out of his seat.”
Judges 3:15, 20
Ehud is left-handed, so the dagger strapped to his right thigh is the one place a guard would not frisk. He gets a private audience with Eglon, the fat king of Moab who has held Israel eighteen years, on the pretext of “a secret errand… a message from God” — and the message is a blade. It is a grim, almost darkly comic scene, and the narrator lingers on the undignified details. Judges does not clean up its deliverers; it shows God using flawed and unlikely people, left hands and all.
An Ox Goad
“And after him was Shamgar the son of Anath, which slew of the Philistines six hundred men with an ox goad: and he also delivered Israel.”
Judges 3:31
One verse, one man, one farm tool. An ox goad is a long pole for driving cattle — not a weapon — and Shamgar delivers Israel with it. The line reads like the throwaway note it is, and that is the point: God’s deliverers arrive with whatever is already in their hand. Moses had a shepherd’s staff, Shamgar a cattle prod, David a sling. “What is that in thine hand?” (Exodus 4:2) is a question the whole book keeps answering.
