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 9:18

9:18 But you have attacked ⁴  my father’s family ⁵  today. You murdered his seventy legitimate ⁶  sons on one stone and made Abimelech, the son of his female slave, king over the leaders of Shechem, just because he is your close relative. ⁷ 

Judges 11:13

11:13 The Ammonite king said to Jephthah’s messengers, “Because Israel stole ⁸  my land when they ⁹  came up from Egypt – from the Arnon River in the south to the Jabbok River in the north, and as far west as the Jordan. ¹⁰  Now return it ¹¹  peaceably!”

Judges 18:1

The Tribe of Dan Finds an Inheritance

18:1 In those days Israel had no king. And in those days the Danite tribe was looking for a place ¹²  to settle, because at that time they did not yet have a place to call their own among the tribes of Israel. ¹³ 

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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 This has been replaced by the pronoun (“he”) in the translation for stylistic reasons.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 “have risen up against.”

⁵ tn Heb “house.”

⁶ tn The word “legitimate” is not in the Hebrew text, but is supplied in the translation for clarification.

⁷ tn Heb “your brother.”

⁸ tn Or “took”; or “seized.”

⁹ tn Heb “he” (a collective singular).

¹⁰ tn Heb “from the Arnon to the Jabbok and to the Jordan.” The word “River” has been supplied in the translation with “Arnon” and “Jabbok,” because these are less familiar to modern readers than the Jordan.

¹¹ tc The translation assumes a singular suffix (“[return] it”); the Hebrew text has a plural suffix (“[return] them”), which, if retained, might refer to the cities of the land.

¹² tn Heb “an inheritance.”

¹³ tn Heb “because there had not fallen to them by that day in the midst of the tribes of Israel an inheritance.”