{"id":55093,"date":"2019-05-07T13:24:47","date_gmt":"2019-05-07T10:24:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=55093"},"modified":"2022-11-29T16:06:36","modified_gmt":"2022-11-29T14:06:36","slug":"game-of-judges-season-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/game-of-judges-season-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Game of Judges, Season 3"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-content\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[570,762],"acf":{"old_id":"55093","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":55055,"related_cahpter":"214","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"Ehud\u2019s sinister, gutsy move saves Israel","content":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A faceless diplomat who is in fact a skilled assassin. A hidden weapon, a stealth attack against a king, a daring escape to lead the battle against a now weakened enemy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A tale from the 1001 Arabian Nights? Or perhaps the director\u2019s cut of Game of Thrones?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Nope. Try the Book of Judges, season (sorry, chapter) three.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Israelites had sent their representative to Moab, to do what they had done for eighteen years since their defeat by the Moab\/Ammon\/Amalek alliance: pay tribute. But this year\u2019s would be a little different.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The text foreshadows the plot at the very beginning, telling us that Ehud ben Gera was from the tribe of Binyamin, and that he was <\/span><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">itair yad yemin<\/span><\/em><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sometimes, the story is in the details. The term <\/span><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">itair yad yemin<\/span><\/em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is of somewhat uncertain meaning. The Septuagint renders it as \u201cambidextrous\u201d, while Rashi understands it as \u201cleft-handed\u201d. Either way, it\u2019s a very big deal: in a world dominated by hand-to-hand combat, being either ambidextrous or left-handed gives a fighter an enormous advantage (just ask Arya Stark).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To the ear of a biblical Israelite, the end is revealed in the beginning. Every occurrence of the phrase <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><em>itair yad yemin<\/em> <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">in the Hebrew Bible (Judges 3:15, Judges 20:15-16, and 1 Chronicles 12:2) involves the military, and the tribe of Benjamin. Even better, \u00a0the name \u201cBinyamin\u201d itself literally means \u201cson of the right\u201d. How stealthy is that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And so, Ehud gets his short-sword past the guards by hiding it on his <\/span><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">right<\/span><\/em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> thigh, where no one would even think to check. In a <\/span><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">sinister<\/span><\/em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> plot move (sorry, had to), Ehud offers the king a private message from God. Ehud indeed does deliver a message to Eglon from God, just with his sword instead of his mouth.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The actual assassination is straight out of Game of Thrones (see Tyrion Lannister\u2019s killing of his father Tywin), with the added twist (ahem) of Ehud disposing of the weapon in the fat of King Eglon (a rather \u201cgutsy\u201d move). By the time the king\u2019s hapless servants figure out what has gone down, our hero has already made his escape, and is planning the next phase of his next attack: to liberate Israel from its now weakened oppressors.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Image: <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Speculum Humanae Salvationis, Westfalen oder K\u00f6ln, 1360, Darmstadt \/ wikimedia<\/span><\/p>\n","image":{"ID":55094,"id":55094,"title":"jud3-Speculum_Darmstadt","filename":"jud3-Speculum_Darmstadt.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/jud3-Speculum_Darmstadt.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/game-of-judges-season-3\/jud3-speculum_darmstadt\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"jud3-speculum_darmstadt","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":55093,"date":"2019-05-07 10:24:35","modified":"2019-05-07 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