Ehud son of Gera and Eglon king of Moab
Eighteen years of tribute—and one left-handed man with a cubit-long sword on his right thigh. After it the land had quiet eighty years, longer than anywhere else in the book.
Eglon king of Moab gathered Ammon and Amalek to himself, struck Israel and took the City of Palms, that is Jericho. For eighteen years tribute was brought to him.
Ehud son of Gera of the tribe of Benjamin was "itter yad yemino"—a man whose right hand was bound; left-handed. He made a two-edged sword a cubit long and strapped it on his right side under his clothes, where guards do not search. He brought the present, dismissed the bearers, turned back from the quarries by Gilgal and said: "I have a secret word for you, O king." The king ordered everyone out. Ehud said: "I have a word of God for you"—and the king rose from his seat.
What follows is told in unusual detail: how the haft went in after the blade, how the servants waited to the point of embarrassment, thinking the king had shut himself in, and how in that time Ehud got away.
He blew the shofar on the hill country of Ephraim, took the fords of the Jordan—and Moab was subdued. "And the land had quiet eighty years."
How we know
Sources
Tanakh
- Shoftim 3:12–30 — eighteen years, the tribute, the cubit-long sword and eighty years of quiet
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Nazir 23b — "Ruth was the daughter of the son of Eglon king of Moab"
- Sanhedrin 105b — the same line—from Balak through Eglon to Ruth
- Seder Olam Rabbah 12 — Eglon's eighteen years fall within Ehud's eighty
Basis: stated in the Tanakh.