Have you ever felt that the problem was too big and your strength too small to solve it? Maybe it’s an unfair boss, a debt that never goes away, a situation that drags on year after year with no solution in sight.
That is what Israel lived through for eighteen years. The people had sinned, and as a result, served Eglon, king of Moab, a foreign ruler who collected tribute and humiliated the nation chosen by God.
When the people cried out, the Lord raised up an unlikely deliverer: Ehud, son of Gera, from the tribe of Benjamin. The Bible records an unusual detail about him: he was left-handed.
This trait, which might seem like a limitation, became his advantage. While delivering the tribute to Eglon, Ehud hid a double-edged sword on his right thigh, under his clothes, knowing that, being left-handed, he could draw it without being noticed.
After delivering the tribute, Ehud sent his companions away and returned alone to the king, saying he had a secret message from God for him. Alone with him in the private room of the palace, he drew the sword with his left hand and struck Eglon a fatal blow.
He locked the doors behind him and escaped, while the servants, thinking the king was simply relieving himself in the room, waited without concern. Ehud fled to Seirah and from there went up into the hill country of Ephraim, where he blew a trumpet and gathered Israel for battle.
Under his leadership, the people seized the fords of the Jordan and defeated about ten thousand Moabites, subduing Moab. The land had rest from war for eighty years, the longest period of peace in the entire book of Judges.
The story of Ehud tells us that God does not need perfect people or large armies to deliver. He uses whoever is available, with whatever resources they have, even what the world would call a disadvantage, to open paths of freedom where there was only oppression.
