courtiers, 3:22; see below); and he locks the doors behind him as he makes his escape (3:23) to keep the courtiers out longer.195 Of course, all of this could be interpreted positively as Ehud’s actions undertaken with a trust in Yahweh’s ability to give him victory.196 But, again, the absence of Yahweh in these transactions is a hint of pejoration from the narrator’s quill.
The action is fast-forwarded from the moment the king rises to greet Ehud the second time around (3:20)—eight wayyiqtol verb forms cascade through 3:21–23 as the assassination is accomplished: Ehud stretched, he took, he thrust, the handle entered, the fat closed, he did not draw out, excrement (implied) came out, Ehud came out, closed the doors, and locked them (xl;v.YIw:, xQ;YIw:, h'[,q't.YIw:, aboY"w:, rGOs.YIw:, aceYEw:, aceYEw:, rGOs.YIw:; wayyishlakh, wayyiqqakh, wayyitqa‘eha, wayyabo’, wayyisgor, wayyetse’, wayyetse’, wayyisgor)!197 He knows what he is doing—it is intentional, deliberate, and delivered with malice aforethought. “Taken together therefore, the unexpected left-handed ‘son of the right-handers’ wielding a double mouthed weapon would constitute a fitting symbolic introduction to an incongruously deceptive deliverer who would attempt an assassination with the help of verbal double entendres.”198
There is yet another argument for seeing Ehud negatively in this story: the parallels between Ehud and Joab—their respective assassinations are remarkably similar.199
Scripture clearly is disapproving of Joab’s actions: see 2 Sam 3:28–39; 1 Kgs 2:5–6, 31–32. That there was a deliberate attempt to link Joab’s killing of Amasa with Ehud’s killing of Eglon seems evident. The elaborate details of Joab’s attire (2 Sam 20:8) seem to be quite unnecessary, unlike in the case of Ehud where covertness was critical. Also, it is Joab’s left hand that delivers the coup de grâce (his right hand held Amasa’s beard, 20:9), though it would not have mattered to the story had Joab held Amasa’s beard with his left hand and thrust the sword in with his right; for Ehud, his other-sidedness helped him smuggle in a weapon. The notice of Amasa’s disembowelment (20:10) also seems somewhat adventitious; that of Eglon was crucial to Ehud’s escape cloaked in nasty odors. All that to say, Joab’s actions seem to have been described with an intentional allusion to Ehud’s.
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