The prophesy

“Benjamin is a ravenous wolf; In the morning he devours the prey, And at night he divides the spoil.”

Against the law

Benjamin is a ravenous wolf. To understand Benjamin and the Benjaminite’s we need to know the word ravenous and the personality of a wolf. Ravenous is the way a wolf tears a prey and kills it. The Israelites had learned to kill an animal by draining the blood, separating the blood from the meat because the life is in the blood. However, the Benjaminite’s did not bother to use this slow method of killing, they just tore the prey apart and ate it, all against the law.

How to play the game

Benjamin was born with a wolf personality, a wolf is not a typical brave warrior, he measures his chances and make his plan together with other wolves. Wolves do not follow orders, they obey their own plan of gain and surviving. When a wolf or wolves are challenged, opposed or attacked, they snarl and showing teeth to scare and intimidate the opposition while they measure the situation. They most likely withdraw and find other wolves and together decide how to play the game right.

We do not know

In the times of the Judges the Israelites many times did what was evil in the eyes of YHWH, translated “The lord” here is the word in Hebrew read from wright to left, “יְהוָ֑ה” The four letters are consonants, and the dots and lines beneath the word is called nikud and indicates the vowels following the consonants. However, the nikud did not arrive before 7 to 9 hundred years after Christ, so actually we do not know how God’s name was pronounced. I have chosen the vowel a, then God’s name would look like this “YaHaWaH” and is pronounced something like this “Yahaoua”

Ehud is chosen to bring the gift

Once when the Israelites did what was evil in the eyes of YaHaWaH, God strengthened Eglon the king of Moab who together with the Ammonites and the Amalekites attacked the Israelites and subdued them and took hold of the city of Jericho. Eglon governed Israel for 18 years, then the Israelites again cried out to God and He answered as always and raised up Ehud the son of Gera, a Benjamite, a left-handed man. The Israelites send a tribute, a gift to the king Eglon. The Israelites served the Moabite king and regularly payed tribute, Eglon got used to receive from The Israelites. They chose Ehud to bring this gift to the king and it seemed to be a custom to let the messenger into meet the king personally and give him the tribute.

Eglon stood up

King Eglon saw the tribute and it seems like the gift convinced him to trust Ehud the messenger. Ehud left, however he returned to the king and said he had a secret message for him and Eglon sent out from him all his servants for this secret to be revealed. Ehud went closer and said he had a message from God, and Eglon stood up and Ehud grabbed the two edged short sword he had camouflaged at his wright hip with his left hand and stabbed Eglon in the belly, the sword went in with the hilt also and Ehud left it in the belly of Eglon.

Cutting off his head

Ehud was a Benjaminite he did not fight Eglon and his men, he used a cunning plan to disarm the king of his suspiciousness and then kill him, and when he left, he closed and locket the doors to give the impression that the king did not want to be disturbed. Ehud the Benjaminite wolf had injured the enemy drastically by cutting off its “head” the center, this is how the wolfs do it. And then he hurried to the mountain area and blew the trumpets and gathered the “wolf-pack”, it was time to attack the injured animal.

The attacked animal is killed

Ehud rode in front of them from the hill country, must have been from the Jerusalem area, and gave the order to pursue the Moabites in the area surrounding Jericho, however some of the wolf-pack of Israel took another direction and seized the fords of the Jordan opposite Moab and did not allow anyone to cross. They struck down at that time about ten thousand Moabite men, all strong, courageous men; not a man escaped.

80 years with peace

This is wolf tactic, they attacked when the Moabites had no-one giving orders and the wolf anticipated the Moabites fleeing toward Moab and needed to cross the river Jordan. God helped the Israelites by a lefthanded wolf, the goal was to liberate Israel not to be aggressive. Ehud’s wolf tactic resulted in 80 years of peace for the Israelites.

Questions

1. Do we need to pray?
2. How do we do the right things in the eyes of God?