Ehud son of Gera אהוד בן גרא

For eighteen years Israel served Eglon king of Moab. Tribute was carried up yearly; that year it was taken by Ehud son of Gera of the tribe of Benjamin, "a man bound as to his right hand" — that is, left-handed.

He made himself a two-edged sword a cubit long and strapped it under his clothes on his right thigh. The reasoning was simple and exact: weapons are looked for on the left, because everyone is right-handed.

Having delivered the tribute and sent the bearers away, he came back and said to the king: I have a secret word for you. Eglon dismissed his attendants and stayed in the cool upper chamber. Ehud said: I have a word of God for you — the king rose, and then the left hand took the sword from the right thigh.

Ehud went out, locked the doors behind him and left. The servants, finding the doors locked, assumed the king was relieving himself and waited "to the point of embarrassment" — that was time enough.

He blew the shofar in the hill country of Ephraim, seized the fords of the Jordan and let not one Moabite through. "And the land had rest eighty years."

Immediately after, in a single line, Shamgar son of Anath is named.

The years here are computed by adding up the terms given in the book of Judges itself, counting from the death of Joshua; they are not stated as such in the source.