I have said that the Canaanites, who were spared by the Israelites after the first encounter with them, partly that they might derive from the conquered race a tribute, and partly that they might employ them in the servile offices of hewing wood and drawing water, by degrees recovered their spirit, waged war successfully against their invaders, and for many years mightily oppressed Israel. The Philistines, the most formidable of the inhabitants of Canaan, and those under whom the Israelites suffered the most severely, added policy to power. For at their bidding it came to pass (and probably the precaution was adopted by others besides the Philistines), that “there was no smith found throughout all the land of Israel; for the Philistines said, Lest the Hebrews make themselves swords and spears. But all the Israelites went down to the Philistines, to sharpen every man his share, and his coulter, and his axe, and his mattock.” (1 Samuel 13:19)
Such is said to have been the rigorous law of the conquerors. The workers in iron were everywhere put down, lest, under pretence of making implements for the husbandman, they should forge arms for the rebel. Now that some such law was actually in force (I am not aware that direct mention is made of it except in this one passage), is a fact confirmed by a great many incidents, some of them very trifling and inconsiderable, none of them related or connected, but all of them turned by this one key.
Thus, when Ehud prepared to dispatch Eglon the King of Moab, to whom the Israelites were then subject, “he made him” (we are told) “a dagger, which had two edges, of a cubit length, and he did gird it under his raiment upon his right thigh;” (Judges 3:16) he made it himself, it seems, expressly for the occasion, and he bound it upon his right thigh, instead of his left, which was the sword-side, to baffle suspicion; whilst, being left-handed, he could wield it nevertheless. Moreover it may be observed, in passing, that Ehud was a Benjamite (Judges 3:15); and that of the Benjamites, when their fighting men turned out against Israel in the affair of Gibeah, there were seven hundred choice slingers left-handed (Judges 2:16); and that of this discomfited army, six hundred persons escaped to the rock Rimmon, none so likely as the light-armed; and that this escape is dated by one of our most careful investigators of Scripture, Dr. Lightfoot, at thirteen years before Ehud’s accession (Lightfoot’s Works, i. 44–47). What, then, is more probable—yet I need not say how incidental is this touch of truth—than that this left-handed Ehud, a Benjamite, was one who survived of those seven hundred left-handed slingers, who were Benjamites?
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Author: John James Blunt
Keywords: Blacksmith, smith, iron, iron worker, worker of iron, left hand, left handed, Benjamites, sling, sling stone, slingshot, sling shot, no smith in Israel, Goliath, David and Goliath
Bible reference(s): Judges 2:16, Judges 3:15-16, Judges 3:31, Judges 5:8, Judges 14:5-6, 1 Sam. 13:19
Source: Undesigned Coincidences in the Writings of the Old & New Testament (London: John Murray, 1869).
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