Don't Count Out The Lefties

Ehud says to the fat king, "I have a message from God for you" before he plunges his knife into the fat belly. Judges 3 vs 20. I still marvel at how I can read these passages over and over and find a story that I didn't see before. I started thinking about what Pastor David McGee taught one Sunday. "When you see something in the Bible that looks insignificant,it's usually the opposite." I got so much more out of this passage because I looked past the ~insignificance~ of this verse. Judges 3 vs 1 ~But when the sons of Israel cried to the Lord, The Lord raised up a deliverer for them, Ehud the son of Gera, the Benjamite, a left-handed man. Hmmmmm...What does being left-handed have to do with anything. I delved into the word and God revealed one of those nuggets of gold that he leaves all throughout his word. Benjamin (which comes from the Hebrew name Binyamin which means "son of my right hand", "son of the right hand", or "son of the south.") Ironically the name suggest a right handed person to start with. During these times of hand combat, most men were RIGHT handed and were encouraged to be so. So when a man moves with his right hand to his left thigh, it would trigger a defensive impulse as most men would use their right hand to swiftly draw a weapon. Hence Ehud moving with his left hand for a weapon would not alarm the king. But the providence of God in raising this man was so much more than the death of the fat king. Here is the line of Benjamites after Ehud. The actions of this left handed judge may have preserved a line that led to the apostle Paul. Here are the Benjamites after him. 1. Ehud, the left-handed Judge and Liberator who killed King Eglon and drove out the Midianite invaders; 2. Saul, the first King of Israel who rebelled, apostatised and was deposed; 3. The son of Saul, Jonathan, who was David's loyal friend; 4. The great prophet Jeremiah who suffered so terribly in the last days of Judah; 5. Brave Esther who married the Persian Emperor to save the Judahites and Benjamites from extinction; and 6. The apostle Paul, who began life as an enemy of Messiah and then became His bravest supporter and the faith's foremost theologian