Judges 3:15

New English Translation

Footnotes

1. Judges 3:15 tn Heb “the Lord.” This has been replaced by the pronoun (“he”) in the translation for stylistic reasons.
2. Judges 3:15 tn The phrase, which refers to Ehud, literally reads “bound/restricted in the right hand,” apparently a Hebrew idiom for a left-handed person. See Judg 20:16, where 700 Benjaminites are described in this way. Perhaps the Benjaminites purposely trained several of their young men to be left-handed warriors by restricting the use of the right hand from an early age so the left hand would become dominant. Left-handed men would have a distinct military advantage, especially when attacking city gates. See B. Halpern, “The Assassination of Eglon: The First Locked-Room Murder Mystery,” BRev 4 (1988): 35.
3. Judges 3:15 tn Heb “The Israelites sent by his hand an offering to Eglon, king of Moab.”