One other person, place or group in the registry answers to the name Eglon. Every Eglon in the Bible
- verses
- 4
- first named
- Judges 3:12
- last named
- Judges 3:20
- period
- before Israel's Monarchy
- tribe
- Moab
Description
Who was Eglon?
Eglon was the king of Moab who oppressed the Israelites for eighteen years, as recorded in the book of Judges. After the Israelites did evil in the sight of the Lord, God strengthened Eglon against them and allowed him to conquer and rule over Israel (Jdg.3.12-14).
During this period of oppression, the Israelites cried out to the Lord for deliverance. In response, God raised up Ehud, a left-handed Benjamite, as a deliverer (Jdg.3.15). Ehud crafted a double-edged sword and concealed it under his clothing.
Acting as an emissary, Ehud brought tribute to Eglon, who is described as a very fat man (Jdg.3.17). After presenting the tribute, Ehud sent away the people who had carried it and returned to Eglon, claiming to have a secret message for him. When Eglon dismissed his attendants, Ehud approached him and declared, "I have a message from God for you" (Jdg.3.18-20).
Ehud then drew his concealed sword with his left hand and thrust it into Eglon's belly. The sword's hilt sank in after the blade, and Eglon's fat closed over it. Ehud left the sword in Eglon's body and escaped, locking the doors of the upper room behind him (Jdg.3.21-23).
Eglon's servants later discovered their king dead and Ehud long gone. Ehud rallied the Israelites, who seized the fords of the Jordan leading to Moab and struck down about 10,000 Moabites. This victory brought peace to the land for eighty years (Jdg.3.24-30).
The story of Eglon's oppression and Ehud's assassination highlights the cycle of sin, oppression, and deliverance that characterizes the book of Judges. It also demonstrates God's faithfulness in raising up deliverers for His people when they cry out to Him.
Relations
Direct connections
Every entity the graph places in a stated relation with this one, grouped by the kind of link. Each relation is authored once and its inverse derived, so both ends always agree. Rows marked “registry” come from the identity spine rather than from a verse, and a row marked “which bearer is the source’s decision” is one where the name could have meant more than one person. The last group is not a relation at all — it counts the events two entities stand in together.
Places
Where this happens
The places the claims about this person reach, drawn where the gazetteer locates them. A point is where a row puts them and never where tradition does; no line joins two points, because the rows state where and not in what order.
The pattern
Where Eglon is named
Every book of the corpus in the order it is read, each as wide as the chapters it holds. A bar is the verses of that book which write the name, and the flat stretches are as much of the answer as the bars.
4 verses across 1 of 66 books; 65 write the name nowhere. Named in Judges (4).
Read it
Where to read it
Every verse of the text carried here that names this entity — 4, across 1 book. The name is written 5 times in them.
Onward
Where this page goes
Nothing in the graph stands one hop from this entity yet. These are the best-connected entities of the same type, so the page still ends somewhere. Descriptions by STEPBible TIPNR.
Where they appear
Chapter by chapter
Atlas's reading of each chapter this person appears in, in canonical order. One line per chapter, and each leads to the whole of it.
Sources