Judges 3:15

3:15 When the Israelites cried out for help to the Lord, he ¹  raised up a deliverer for them. His name was Ehud son of Gera the Benjaminite, a left-handed man. ²  The Israelites sent him to King Eglon of Moab with their tribute payment. ³ 

Judges 16:3

16:3 Samson spent half the night with the prostitute; then he got up in the middle of the night and left. ⁴  He grabbed the doors of the city gate, as well as the two posts, and pulled them right off, bar and all. ⁵  He put them on his shoulders and carried them up to the top of a hill east of Hebron. ⁶ 

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¹ tn Heb “the Lord.” This has been replaced by the pronoun (“he”) in the translation for stylistic reasons.

² 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 tn Heb “The Israelites sent by his hand an offering to Eglon, king of Moab.”

⁴ tn Heb “And Samson lay until the middle of the night and arose in the middle of the night.”

⁵ tn Heb “with the bar.”

⁶ tn Heb “which is upon the face of Hebron.”