Judge Ehud

Judges 3:12–30 tells that Eglon, king of Moab, seized Jericho, the "City of Palms", and held Israel subject for eighteen years. Ehud son of Gera, a Benjaminite who was left-handed, made a double-edged dagger about a cubit long and strapped it to his right thigh under his clothes. After delivering Israel's tribute he returned alone and, in the king's private upper chamber, said "I have a word from God for you" and drove the dagger into Eglon's belly; the king was so fat that the blade disappeared. Ehud locked the doors and slipped out, while the servants waited, assuming the king was relieving himself. He then sounded the shofar in the hill country of Ephraim, seized the fords of the Jordan and killed about 10,000 Moabites, and the Bible says the land had rest eighty years.

The story is full of irony: Benjamin means "son of the right hand", yet the tribe was famous for left-handed fighters, including 700 slingers who "could sling a stone at a hair and not miss" (Judges 20:16). Eglon's name recalls egel, "calf", fitting a king slaughtered like a fatted animal.