Judges Chapter 3 verse 22 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 22. - The haft, etc. Ehud, feeling the necessity of killing Eglon at one blow, plunged the dagger into his body with such force that the handle went in with the blade, and he was unable to draw it out. Leaving it, therefore, buried in his fat, he went out at once into the parshedon, or antechamber, for so it is best to render the last words of the verse, and thence into the misederon, the outer porch, having first locked the door of the summer chamber. The words parshedon and misederon occur only here, and the former is very variously rendered.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(22) The haft also went in after the blade.--The tremendous violence of the blow marks that resoluteness of character which Ehud shows throughout. The Hebrew for "blade" is "flame," as the LXX. here render it. It is as though the vivid narrator would make us see the flash of the dagger ere it is buried, hilt and all, in the huge body. So in Nahum 3:3 we have, "The horseman lifteth up the flame of the sword and the lightning of the spear." The only other passage where the word occurs is to describe the polished head of the spear of Goliath (1Samuel 17:7).So that he could not draw the dagger out.--Thus he had disarmed himself by the force of his own blow; but the original only says, "for he did not draw the dagger out."And the dirt came out.--The meaning of this clause is excessively doubtful, because the Hebrew word rendered "dirt" (parsedonah) occurs here and here only. (1) Our E.V. follows the Chaldee and the Vulgate with the alternative rendering (2) "it came out at the fundament" (marg.), which is the view of Gesenius. The Jews were themselves uncertain of the meaning and even in Rabbi Tanchum's commentary we find that some understood it to mean (3) "he (Ehud) ran out into the gallery." (4) A fourth guess--that of the Syriac version--is, "he went out hastily." The LXX. omit it altogether, either because they thought that they were consulting propriety--a tendency which they constantly show--or because they could not rightly explain it. The resemblance of the word parsedonah to the word misder?nah ("porch"), in the next clause, is certainly in favour of its meaning some part of the house. Ewald renders it, "he rushed out into the gallery," which runs round the roof. He refers to Ezekiel 42:5. To understand it more exactly, we should require to know the structure of the house. Following the analogy of other Eastern houses, as described by Shaw, it seems that Eglon's alijah was a separate building (domation, Jos.), or part of a building, with one door opening on a balcony, and another on a private staircase and closet (Judges 3:24). It was an inner room, and its outer door communicated with the house.