And Ehud put forth his left hand, and took the dagger from his right thigh, and thrust it into his belly:
Ver. 21. And thrust it into his belly.] This he did by an extraordinary call from God; Jdg 3:15 and therefore this example was traitorously misapplied to Ravillas, that desperate assassin, who murdered the French king by the instigation of the Jesuits, and defended it when he had done. Our own chronicles a tell us of one Birchet in Queen Elizabeth's reign, who by the example of Ehud, thought he might lawfully have killed a great personage in this kingdom, whom he took to be God's enemy. Upon the same account he wounded Hawkins, and slew his keeper. The Janizaries have learned of the Jesuits the art of king killing: but to preserve him from harm by strangers, they allow none to come into the presence of the grand signior, but first they search him that he have no weapon; and so clasping him by the arms under colour of doing him honour, dissemblingly bereave him of the use of his hands, lest he should offer him any violence. b
And thrust it into his belly.] Eglon stabbed into the guts, finds his bane the same way with his sin. It was good counsel that one gave Henry IV of France, after that he had been first stabbed in the mouth and lost a tooth only, to take heed he denied not God with his heart, as he had already done with his mouth where now he was wounded, lest the next stab were to the heart, as indeed it proved.
a Camden's Elisab, 174.
b Turk. Hist.