Judges 3:14

Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex)

English Translation

The children of Israel served Eglon the king of Moab eighteen years.

World English Bible · Public Domain

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Word by word

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עֶגְל֣וֹן

ʻEglôwn

H5700

“Eglon”

Noun, Proper

Appears 13× in the Hebrew Bible
First appears at Joshua 10:3

Full BDB Definition

Origin: from H5695

TWOT: None

Eglon = "calf-like" - king of Moab who oppressed the children of Israel for 18 years before he was killed by the judge Ehud (noun proper masculine) - a royal city in Canaan that opposed the conquest; located in the low lands of Judah (noun proper locative)

About this verse

These counts appear in no published source. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged text and Lemma’s own curated glosses. What Lemma adds →

10: words
10: distinct lemmas
Historical: section

Notable vocabulary

The rarest word here is עֶגְל֣וֹן Eglon H5700 — appearing just 13 times in the whole Hebrew Bible.

Shared distinctive vocabulary

עֶגְל֣וֹן Eglon H5700 occurs in 12 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:

Grammatical profile

1 verb
6 nouns
2 adjectives
1 particle

Verb forms

וַיַּעַבְד֤וּ Qal · Sequential Imperfect

Hebrew & Septuagint length

In English translation the verse runs 12 words from the Hebrew and 13 from the Septuagint (LXX English) — closely comparable.

A rough comparison of the two English renderings, which tokenize alike — not a word-level alignment.

Word counts can differ between the Hebrew and the Greek without any difference in meaning — e.g. the Hebrew direct-object marker אֵת has no separate Greek word, and Greek often adds the article ὁ.

In the original languages it is 10 Hebrew tokens and 12 Greek tokens — but the two are counted differently (Hebrew bundles its prefixes and suffixes into one token; the Greek is in lemma form), so that isn’t a like-for-like length.

Cross-references

Topical passages linked to Judges 3:14 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.

Leviticus 26:23–25 "'If by these things you won't be reformed to me, but will walk contrary to me;
Deuteronomy 28:40 You shall have olive trees throughout all your borders, but you shall not anoint yourself with the oil; for your olive shall cast [its fruit].
Deuteronomy 28:47–48 Because you didn't serve Yahweh your God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, by reason of the abundance of all things;

Cross-references courtesy of OpenBible.info (CC BY 4.0).

Hebrew and Greek witnesses Masoretic Hebrew ↔ Greek Septuagint

The same verse in the two great witnesses to the Old Testament, shown verse-for-verse.

These are two independent witnesses, not word-aligned to each other, and the Septuagint is shown in lemma (dictionary) form.

Hebrew Judges 3:14 Masoretic · Westminster Leningrad Codex

וַיַּעַבְד֤וּ בְנֵֽי יִשְׂרָאֵל֙ אֶת עֶגְל֣וֹן מֶֽלֶךְ מוֹאָ֔ב שְׁמוֹנֶ֥ה עֶשְׂרֵ֖ה שָׁנָֽה

The children of Israel served Eglon the king of Moab eighteen years.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Greek LXX Judges 3:14 Septuagint · lemma form

καί δουλεύω ὁ υἱός ἰσραήλ ὁ εγλωμ βασιλεύς μωαβ ἔτος δέκα ὀκτώ

And the children of Israel served Eglom the king of Moab eighteen years.

LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) · Public Domain

On this verse, John Gill's Exposition discusses the Septuagint’s reading. Read the note in Commentary ↓

Hebrew: Westminster Leningrad Codex (CC BY 4.0). Greek: Septuagint (public domain); English from LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) (Public Domain). How the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew →

Targum (Aramaic paraphrase)

The Targum is the ancient Jewish Aramaic paraphrase of the Hebrew Scriptures — an interpretive translation, not the Hebrew text itself. Onkelos (literal) and Pseudo-Jonathan (expansive) render the Torah, and Jonathan the Prophets. Coverage is partial: where no permissively-licensed English translation exists for a verse, only the Aramaic is shown. This is verse-level text, not a word-by-word alignment to the Hebrew.

Targum Jonathan Prophets (Joshua–Malachi)

וּפְלַחוּ בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל יַת עֶגְלוֹן מַלְכָּא דְמוֹאָב תַּמְנֵי עַסְרֵי שְׁנִין:

(no public-domain English translation for this verse)

Targum Jonathan — Aramaic: “Mikraot Gedolot” (public domain). English: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “London "Chaldee Paraphrase," 1871” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.

Commentary

Notes on Judges 3:14 from classic Christian and Jewish commentators (each source and its license shown beneath its notes). The classic Christian expositions comment on the surrounding passage and are grouped to its opening verse, so a note may address several verses; the Jewish commentaries on the Tanakh (Rashi and others) are per-verse, so they appear only where the commentator wrote on this verse.

Lemma curates 59 commentaries, every one of them public domain or Creative Commons licensed, each selected and text-cleaned for this edition rather than reprinted as found. About our sources →

Trapp's Complete Commentary

John Trapp

Jdg 3:14 So the children of Israel served Eglon the king of Moab eighteen years.

Ver. 14. Served Eylon … eighteen years.] Eight years they served Chusanrishathaim, {Jdg 3:8} now Eglon eighteen, and afterwards Jabin twenty. With the froward God will wrestle; {Psa 18:20} neither will God give to much punishing, till men do sinning; but punish them seven times more; {Lev 26:28} for is it fit that he should lay down the bucklers first, and not get the better of them?

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(14) Served Eglon.—One instance of that receiving of “a yoke of iron” which had been threatened as a punishment of apostasy (Deu_28:47-48). The narrative, however, shows that the Moabite dominion did not extend beyond the borders of Ephraim (Jdg_3:13).

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

John Gill's Exposition

So the children of Israel served Eglon king of Moab eighteen years. Ten years longer than they served the king of Mesopotamia, Jdg 3:8, as a severer correction of them for their relapse into idolatry.

, as a severer correction of them for their relapse into idolatry.

Judges 3:15

jdg 3:15

jdg 3:15

jdg 3:15But when the children of Israel cried unto the Lord,.... After being long oppressed, and groaning under their burdens, and brought to a sense of their sins, and humiliation for them, they asked forgiveness of God, and deliverance from their bondage; for it is very probable they were until towards the close of those years stupid and hardened, and did not consider what was the reason of their being thus dealt with:

the Lord raised them up a deliverer; another saviour, one that he made use of as an instrument of their deliverance:

Ehud the son of Gera, a Benjamite, a man lefthanded; who is described by his parentage, a son of Gera, but who his father was is not known; by his tribe a Benjamite, in which Jericho was, Eglon possessed, and so might be more oppressed than any other part; and therefore the Lord stirred up one of that tribe to be the deliverer; and by his being a lefthanded man, as several of that tribe were, Jdg 20:16; though a Benjamite signifies a son of the right hand; and he perhaps was one of those lefthanded Benjamites that fled to the rock Rimmon, as Dr. Lightfoot (u) conjectures, Jdg 20:47; for that affair, though there related, was before this: the Septuagint calls him an "ambidexter", one that could use both hands equally alike; but the Hebrew phrase signifies one that is "shut up in his right hand" (w); who has not the true use of it, cannot exercise it as his other hand, being weak and impotent, or contracted through disuse, or some disease; or, as Josephus (x) expresses it, who could use his left hand best, and who also calls him a young man of a courageous mind and strong of body, and says he dwelt at Jericho, and was very familiar with Eglon, and who by his gifts and presents had endeared himself to all about the king:

and by him the children of Israel sent a present unto Eglon the king of Moab; either their yearly tribute, or rather a gift unto him, to soften him, and reconcile him to them, and make their bondage easier; or to give him access to him with more confidence and safety, though it does not seem that they knew anything of Ehud's design.

(u) Works, vol. 1. p. 46. (w) "obturatum manu dextera sua", Montanus; "habens manum dexterum obturatum", Munsterus; "erat clausa manu dextera", Tigurine version; "clausum manu dextera", Drusius; "perclusum", Junius & Tremellius; "praaeclusum", Piscator. (x) Ut supra, (Antiqu. l. 5. c. 4.) sect. 2.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Whedon's Commentary on the Bible

Daniel D. Whedon

14. Served Eglon — That is, were tributary. Jdg_3:8, note.

Eighteen years — We cannot estimate the length of the period of Israel’s idolatry from the duration of their punishment. Men are often imprisoned for life for crimes committed in a minute.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

John Wesley's Explanatory Notes

Eighteen years - The former servitude lasted but eight years; this eighteen: for if smaller troubles do not the work, God will send greater.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

Lesson kit

Teaching starters — assembled from the data on this page, not authored interpretation. Every prompt links to the verse data it draws on. Edit before teaching.

Judges, in the Historical, opens this verse with 10 words (10 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is ʻEglôwn (“Eglon”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.

Discussion questions

The word ʻEglôwn carries the sense “Eglon.” How does it shape the verse?
Joshua 10:3 shares the word «Eglon» with this verse. How do the two illuminate each other?
These translations render this verse differently; the difference is in the English rendering, not the original. What questions does that raise?
The verb «וַיַּעַבְד֤וּ» is Qal Sequential Imperfect. How does its form color the action?
Reading how Trapp's Complete Commentary and Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers read this verse, where do the two commentators agree and where do they part?

Things to notice

This verse counts 10 Hebrew ↔ 12 Greek words.
These translations choose different wording for 4 words in this verse.
10 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 10 words in this verse.