Eglon

Biblical Account

Eglon is a king of Moab who appears in Judges 3:12–30. Judges records that when Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD, the LORD strengthened Eglon against Israel. Eglon gathered the children of Ammon and the Amalekites, attacked Israel, and took "the city of palm trees," which is commonly identified with Jericho. Israel then served Eglon for eighteen years.

When Israel cried out, the LORD raised up a deliverer, Ehud the son of Gera, a Benjamite. Ehud was left-handed. He strapped a two-edged dagger about a cubit long (the length from the elbow to the fingertip) to his right thigh and went to present tribute. The text describes Eglon as "a very fat man" (Judges 3:17).

Declaring, "I have a message from God unto thee," Ehud obtained a private audience with the king in his cool upper chamber. When the king rose from his seat, Ehud thrust the dagger into his belly. The hilt went in after the blade, and the fat closed over the blade. Ehud locked the doors and escaped. The king's servants, supposing that he was relieving himself, waited a long time; only when they opened the door with a key did they discover that the king was dead. Meanwhile, Ehud blew a trumpet in the hill country of Ephraim and rallied Israel. The Israelites seized the fords of the Jordan River and killed about ten thousand Moabites. Afterward the land had rest for eighty years.

Significance Within Scripture

The Eglon narrative illustrates the cycle that recurs throughout the book of Judges: Israel sins and suffers foreign oppression, the people cry out, God raises up a deliverer, and a period of rest follows. In 1 Samuel 12:9, Samuel, in his farewell address, recalls that Israel was sold "into the hand of the king of Moab," though he does not name the king. The New Testament does not mention Eglon.

The Amorite city of Eglon mentioned in Joshua 10 and elsewhere is a separate place that merely shares its name with this king.

Interpretation and Debate

• Name and satire: Some interpreters connect the name Eglon with the Hebrew word egel ("calf"). Scholars who follow this interpretation sometimes read the king's corpulence and the scene of his death as satire mocking a powerful foreign king.
• Ehud's methods: Interpreters differ over the fact that a deliverer raised up by God resorted to deception and assassination. Some hold that the text does not commend the method itself. Others read the account as a story of God bringing deliverance through the weak in a time of oppression.
• Extrabiblical traditions: Jewish rabbinic literature preserves a tradition that Eglon was rewarded for rising from his seat at the words "a message from God," so that the Moabite woman Ruth became his descendant. No such account appears in the biblical text.

In the Korean Church

In the Korean church, Eglon appears chiefly as an oppressor in sermons and Sunday school lessons dealing with Ehud or the period of the judges. Sermons devoted solely to Eglon appear to be rare.