ues to
the Moabite sovereign. The money having been paid, the deputies turned
homewards, but when they reached the cromlech of Gilgal,* and were safe
beyond the reach of the enemy, Ehud retraced his steps, and presenting
himself before the palace of Eglon in the attitude of a prophet,
announced that he had a secret errand to the king, who thereupon
commanded silence, and ordered his servants to leave him with the divine
messenger in his summer parlour.

* The cromlech at Gilgal was composed of twelve stones,
which, we are told, were erected by Joshua as a remembrance
of the crossing of the Jordan (Josh. iv. 19-24).

"And Ehud said, I have a message from God unto thee. And he arose out of
his seat. And Ehud put forth his left hand, and took the sword from his
right thigh, and thrust it into his belly: and the haft also went in
after the blade; and the fat closed upon the blade, for he drew not the
sword out of his belly; and it came out behind." Then Ehud locked the
doors and escaped. "Now when he was gone out, his servants came; and
they saw, and, behold, the doors of the parlour were locked; and they
said, Surely he covereth his feet in his summer chamber." But by the
time they had forced an entrance, Ehud had reached Gilgal and was in
safety. He at once assembled the clans of Benjamin, occupied the fords
of the Jordan, massacred the bands of Moabites scattered over the plain
of Jericho, and blocked the routes by which the invaders attempted to
reach the hill-country of Ephraim. Almost at the same time the tribes
in Galilee had a narrow escape from a still more formidable enemy.* They
had for some time been under the Amorite yoke, and the sacred writings
represent them at this juncture as oppressed either by Sisera of
Harosheth-ha-Goyim or by a second Jabin, who was able to bring nine
hundred chariots of iron into the field.** At length the prophetess
Deborah of Issachar sent to Barak of Kadesh a command to assemble his
people, together with those of Zebulon, in the name of the Lord;*** she
herself led the contingents of Issachar, Ephraim, and Machir to meet him
at the foot of Tabor, where the united host is stated to have comprised
forty thousand men. Sisera,**** who commanded the Canaanite force,
attacked the Israelite army between Taanach and Megiddo in that plain
of Kishon which had often served as a battle-field during the Egyptian
campaigns.

* The text tells us that, after the time of Ehud