Eglon’s Fat and Ehud’s Oracle: A Reconsideration of Humour in Judges 3.12–30

Abstract

Judg. 3.12–30 details the assassination of King Eglon of Moab by the Benjaminite Ehud ben Gera. Many scholars insist that the story was originally meant to be funny, contending that the text casts Eglon (i.e. ‘Little Calf’) humorously as a slaughtered bovine. Indeed, some regard the text as ‘satire’, though there remains no consensus as to what, exactly, constitutes the butt of the joke. In this article, I argue that Eglon’s fat and Ehud’s feigned oracle work together to form a comical critique of foreign rulers and their reliance on divination. The argument draws on Victor Raskin’s semantic theory of verbal humour along with a re-examination of fat on elite male bodies in the Hebrew Bible and the practice of ancient oracle giving, as reflected in cuneiform sources. I thus aim to elucidate ways the text would have registered as humorous and meaningful for an ancient West Asian audience.

Judg. 3.12–30 relays an account of violent resistance against foreign occupation. The story begins with King Eglon of Moab conquering Israel and taking up residence in the Cisjordan City of Palms (Jericho). After 18 years of servitude, the Benjaminite Ehud ben Gera assassinates the king – an incident narrated in gruesome detail – and leads an Israelite militia to butcher 10,000 Moabites at the fords of the Jordan River. The resounding victory, which Ehud attributes to Israel’s deity, ushers in an idyllic 80 years of rest for the land.

Despite the sombre subject matter, many scholars insist that the story was originally meant to be funny. Since the 1980s, commentators have generally taken the view popularized by Alter (1981: 45): with the personal name ‘Eglon’ (which can be translated ‘Little Calf’) and the descriptions of his hefty body, the text casts the foreign king humorously as ‘a fattened calf readied for slaughter’. ¹ While some, such as Soggin (1981: 55–56), find in the text an entertaining folktale with ‘no real political or theological interest’, others suspect the humour conveys a serious political message. ² Many regard Judg. 3.12–30 as ‘satire’, though there is some disagreement about who or what constitutes the butt of the joke. ³ For Brettler (1995: 87–89; 1991: 304) and others, the ethnic dimension is critical: the text denigrates Moab in order to perpetuate animosity toward a traditional enemy of Israel. ⁴ Webb (2012: 165–167) suspects ‘the satirical portrayal of the man Eglon also involves an implicit critique of kingship as an institution’. ⁵ Finally, Anderson’s (1987: 59) approach combines the ethnic angle with the issue of kingship and identifies the payment of tribute to foreign powers as the object of the text’s vitriolic humour. These interpretations highlight important aspects of the text, yet none gives adequate attention to the pivotal moment in v. 20, when Ehud claims to have an oracle for the Moabite king. At the same time, although Eglon’s body fat generates inordinate discussion, it remains poorly understood. These two problems – the neglect of Ehud’s oracle and misunderstandings surrounding Eglon’s fat – have obstructed a clear view of the satirical aims of the text.

In this article, I propose a novel answer to the question, ‘Who or what is being satirized in Judg. 3.12–30?’ Building on the view that the text was meant to be humorous, I contend that Eglon’s fat and Ehud’s oracle work together to form a comical critique of foreign rulers’ use of divination. I seek to show why the text would have registered as humorous for an ancient West Asian audience and to explore implications of the text’s humour for interpretation. Though previous scholarship relies implicitly on the sense of humour of modern readers, I draw on the field of humour studies, specifically Raskin’s semantic theory of verbal humour, to identify transcultural indicators of humour in the ancient text. Applied to Judg. 3.12–30, Raskin’s theory proves a useful analytic for uncovering the laughable in both Eglon’s fat and Ehud’s oracle. However, humour theory can only illuminate the text when the interpretation is also informed by relevant cultural knowledge. Hence, I explore the significance of fat on elite male bodies in the Hebrew Bible and the practice of oracle giving in ancient West Asia, as reflected primarily in cuneiform sources. I conclude that the description of Eglon’s body contributes to the text’s humour, not because of a putative Falstaffian caricature it evokes, but rather because of how it produces and then overturns an image of an exploitative tyrant. I suggest further that a scholarly preoccupation with the Moabite’s body has overshadowed the humour involved in Ehud’s feigned oracle (v. 20). To get that joke, modern readers must appreciate the contribution of divination to the exercise of kingship in ancient West Asia.

1. Rehabilitating the Significance of Eglon’s Body

I begin with Eglon’s body, as it tends to dominate discussions of humour in Judg. 3.12–30. In v. 17, Eglon is described as a ‘very fat man’ (אישׁ בריא מאד). Then, when Ehud stabs him in vv. 21–22, the ‘fat’ (חלב) on his belly engulfs the entire dagger. ⁶ Scholars debate exactly how the execution unfolds, but the act evidently releases the stench of Eglon’s bowels, for his servants in an adjacent room suspect he is relieving himself (v. 24). These details, together with the fact that the king’s personal name means ‘Little Calf’, lead a number of commentators to interpret Eglon humorously as a slaughtered calf. ⁷ In these readings, the Moabite king accrues an assortment of negative characteristics: he is sluggish, dim-witted, morbidly obese, inept, and grotesque. ⁸ The physical descriptions in Judg. 3.12–30, from this perspective, mock Eglon by making light of his excessive heft.

Wary of anachronism, other scholars are reluctant to accept the notion that Eglon’s body was meant to provoke laughter. ⁹ They caution against attributing to ancient scribes modern Western ideals and prejudices, observing that body fat is a highly variable social signifier capable of communicating prestige, power, access to resources or beauty. ¹⁰ Indeed, the Hellenistic Jewish translator(s) found the Greek word ἀστεῖος (‘pretty, charming, urbane’) apt for describing the Moabite’s body. ¹¹ Judging from the LXX, the adjective בָּרִיא (‘fat’), used in Judg. 3.17, might convey a regal appearance and indicate success in securing ample tribute. ¹² Indeed, Dan. 1.15 employs בריא when describing male bodies with unambiguously positive connotations: the pious exiled Judeans appeared ‘better and fatter [טוב ובריאי בשׂר] than all of the young men who were eating royal rations’. In view of this description, בריא in Judg. 3.17 could simply hint at Eglon’s kingly diet. As for the word חֵ֫לֶב (also ‘fat’), Stone (2009: 652–653) suggests that this is standard fare for depicting battlefield gore, pointing to its use in a dirge for fallen warriors in 2 Sam. 1.22. Thus, Stone supposes Eglon to be ‘a formidable, healthy, robust man’. ¹³ Similarly, Sasson (2009: 575, 581) translates Judg. 3.17b as ‘Eglon himself was quite an imposing man’ (emphasis mine). For Sasson (2014: 229), the physical portrait indicates the danger this hulking man poses to a lone assassin and the considerable skill – if not divine intervention – required to dispatch him. As Neef (2009: 293) puts it, Eglon is ‘an adversary superior to Ehud’. ¹⁴ These scholars insist that Eglon’s extraordinary size would have struck ancient audiences as a favourable, if not frightening, physical attribute rather than something laughable. ¹⁵

Although the latter scholars are right to avoid projecting contemporary body ideals onto ancient writings, it is not at all clear that Judges 3 presents Eglon’s body in a positive light. To start, the few verses scholars adduce when claiming for Eglon a warrior’s physique are unconvincing. While חלב is found on the bodies of fallen fighters in 2 Sam. 1.22, as Stone points out, in the vast majority of its occurrences in the Hebrew Bible, this word denotes the fatty inner parts of sacrificial animals. ¹⁶ Similarly, the adjective בריא is most often associated with healthy, fattened livestock. ¹⁷ And while Dan. 1.15 uses בריא in its favourable depiction of Daniel and his fellows, the Judean exiles differ in one crucial respect from the mighty Eglon imagined by Sasson, Stone and Neef: they are not warlords. Dan. 1.16–17 fleshes out their description. They continue on a vegetarian diet and acquire ‘knowledge and insight into all writing and wisdom’ (מדע והשׂכל בכל ספר וחכמה). Daniel is singled out for his ‘understanding of all revelation and dreams’ (הבין כל חזון וחלמות), that is, his oneiromantic expertise. His body is fit for dominating fields of knowledge, not battlefields. In short, neither חלב nor בריא is a typical descriptor of a warrior. ¹⁸

Both groups of scholars – those who treat Eglon’s fat as funny per se and those who regard Eglon as a sort of Goliath – overlook a crucial third way of making sense of Eglon’s form. Rather than conjuring the image of a simple buffoon or of a heroic body, I argue, the description of the Moabite king exemplifies a biblical motif locating fat on the bodies of wrongdoers. Hamilton (2005: 15–21) explains well how bodies encode meanings that are readily understood by those possessing the requisite cultural competence. By depicting fatness on elite males, biblical texts frequently encode negative concepts such as gluttony, arrogance, abuse of power and even cultic negligence. This motif appears, for example, in Psalm 73, wherein body fat signifies the wellness of the wicked, who experience no pain in death and in life inhabit fat bodies (בריא in v. 4 and חלב in v. 7). The psalmist registers resentment and ambivalence. Body fat is enviable, but it is also morally suspect. ¹⁹ Another instance of this motif illuminates Eglon’s fat particularly well. While some scholars invoke the appearance of בריא in Dan. 1.15 to construe the king’s body favourably, a more relevant occurrence of the verbal root √brʾ appears in 1 Sam. 2.29. ²⁰ Here, a holy man levels the following accusation against the priest Eli at the cultic centre at Shiloh: ‘Why have you kicked against my sacrifice and my offering, which I commanded here? You have honoured your sons over me, fattening yourselves on the first-fruits of all the offering of Israel, my people’. ²¹ The priestly family shows contempt for the ‘sacrifice’ (זבח) and ‘offering’ (מנחה) of Yahweh. The word used to describe their ‘fattening up’ is לְהַבְרִיאֲכֶם, a hiphil infinitive construct of √brʾ (‘to be fat’). Just as Eli fattens Hophni and Phinehas (להבריאכם) on the ‘entire offering of Israel’ (כל־מנחת ישׂראל) in 1 Sam. 2.29, in Judg. 3.17, Eglon receives Israel’s ‘offering’ (מנחה) as a ‘very fat man’ (אישׁ בריא מאד). ²² Several scholars note that Ehud’s gift giving is depicted using language associated with cultic offerings (notably קרב in the hiphil stem and the word מנחה, which in cultic settings invariably denotes food offerings). ²³ It is significant that Eglon’s ‘very fat’ body appears in v. 17, in the midst of four references to the מנחה he receives (vv. 15, 17, 18). The introduction of his fat here implies a habit of feasting on Israel’s harvest. ²⁴ The Moabite king seems to be fattening himself on the מנחה meant for Israel’s deity. ²⁵ His fat embodies arrogance and the abuse of power. ²⁶ This does not mean, however, that his body could not also induce laughter. To show how Eglon’s fat could have been funny to an ancient West Asian audience, I turn to the field of humour studies.

2. Eglon’s Fat: What’s So Funny About That? (Help from Humour Theory, 1)

Foundational to the interpretation of Judg. 3.12–30 as satire is the notion that the text is meant to be funny. Surprisingly, however, scholars have not yet brought contemporary humour studies to bear on the text. ²⁷ Humour studies revolve around three central theories: Superiority Theory, Relief Theory and Incongruity Theory. ²⁸ According to Superiority Theory, humour generates a sense of superiority over others, often members of social out-groups. Relief Theory maintains that laughter relieves psychological tension, particularly as it relates to highly regulated domains such as sexuality. While these theories focus on the social and psychological effects of humour, Incongruity Theory aims to explain how mirth arises in the first place, namely, the perception of incongruities (the unexpected, the out of place, the inappropriate, the absurd, etc.), along with their resolution, induces laughter. This understanding of humour has been supported by several cross-cultural studies, making it a useful theory for modern scholars interested in uncovering humour in ancient texts. ²⁹ Incongruity Theory is widely accepted and has been formulated from various disciplinary perspectives, as in the semantic theory of verbal humour of linguist Victor Raskin. ³⁰ Through his analysis of jokes, Raskin demonstrates that detecting a text’s humour requires the sequential perception of two opposing semantic ‘scripts’. ³¹ Each script comprises a discrete set of information and belongs to a repertoire of cultural knowledge. By invoking scripts, language users supply unstated or implied semantic content when making sense of the texts they encounter. A humorous text, according to Raskin, is compatible to some extent with two scripts that are incompatible with each other (hence, they are ‘opposing’). One script seems obvious at first, until the text introduces problematic new elements that constitute a ‘script-switching trigger’ (e.g. a punchline). The initial script becomes incongruent with the unfolding text as ambiguities or contradictions appear, and this incongruity is resolved only when a second script emerges and imposes itself retroactively onto the entire text. Readers perceive humour at the moment they exchange the first script for the second. ³² By thus identifying the structure of humorous texts, Raskin’s theory provides scholars with a tool for detecting the presence (or absence) of humour in texts produced in cultural contexts different from their own.

When applied to Judg. 3.12–30, Raskin’s theory proves insightful, as it accommodates both the interpretation of Eglon’s fat as a symbol of oppression (the first script) and the slaughtered-calf reading already accepted by many scholars (the second script). The text’s humour results from the shift between two scripts, both of which are deeply embedded in the ancient West Asian world of the biblical scribes. The ‘script-switching trigger’ appears in vv. 21–23, when Ehud stabs Eglon and additional bovine allusions come into view. ³³ Among graphic depictions of violence in the Hebrew Bible, the description of Eglon’s death is unusual. ³⁴ His ‘fat’ (חלב) engulfs the blade of Ehud’s dagger, and his פַּרְשְׁדֹנָה pours forth. As noted above, the word חלב ordinarily signifies the fat of slaughtered animals. The word פַּרְשְׁדֹנָה is more difficult. A hapax legomenon of uncertain meaning, it seems related to the noun פרשׁ (‘intestines’). ³⁵ Priestly instructions dictate what is to be done with חלב and פרשׁ, among other remains with which a ritual butcher has to reckon. ³⁶ The thrust of the text is to depict gore redolent of a slaughterhouse. ³⁷ The initial script dissolves as the second comes into view, likening Eglon to a butchered animal, a cruel comparison attested also in other instances of ancient West Asian ridicule. ³⁸ Eglon’s ‘very fat’ (בריא מאד) body and his personal name, ‘Little Calf’ – understood finally as tokens of his fate – facilitate his transformation from a ponderous, oppressive foreign king into a domesticated ungulate. ³⁹ Raskin’s theory thus reinforces the slaughtered-calf interpretation while allowing for a more nuanced understanding of the significance of Eglon’s body fat. In short, the assassination re-signifies Eglon’s name and body so that, ironically, the one exploiting Israel’s agricultural production becomes a fatty feast over which Israel laughs. ⁴⁰

3. Ehud’s Oracle: What Does Eglon Expect? (Help from Humour Theory, 2)

The humorous manipulation of Eglon’s body for the purpose of mockery makes it easy to see how the pericope attracts the label ‘satire’. But Ehud’s oracle packs an equally comical punch. To draw again on Raskin’s theory, the oracle, too, can be read according to two opposing scripts. The first script involves the king’s pursuit of political legitimacy via divination. The second script entails the failure of that pursuit. Scholars recognize these scripts superficially when they notice a pun in Judg. 3.19–20: Ehud tells the king he bears ‘a secret message’ (דבר סתר), ‘a message from a deity’ (דבר אלהים). Two meanings of the Hebrew word דבר are in play: is it a ‘secret/divine word (i.e. an oracle)’ or a ‘secret/divine thing (i.e. the hidden murder weapon)’? ⁴¹ Many treat this as jovial wordplay in need of little explication. ⁴² By moving too quickly past the pun, however, they prove Ingela Nilsson’s (2020) point that the aim of a satirical text can be lost when it is sought in isolation from the relevant social and cultural context. In fact, the pun deftly evokes politically potent scripts that come into view only when the text is read against the background of ancient West Asian divination. ⁴³

Cuneiform sources documenting the delivery of oracular messages to kings provide a sense of what the character Eglon expects to hear when his Israelite subject promises to disclose a secret word from a god. ⁴⁴ Mesopotamian oracle giving (or ‘prophecy’) constituted part of an extensive system of royal divination that legitimized kingship as an institution, as well as specific dynasties and decisions made by individual kings. ⁴⁵ Divination-derived knowledge – intel from the gods – contributed substantially to the political and military intelligence informing royal decision making. Thus, oracular messages were highly valued and closely guarded. ⁴⁶ Their transmission amounted to what Stökl (2018: 90) calls ‘a royal advisory service’. Judging from the written sources, two themes dominate the messages kings were accustomed to receiving from the gods via oracular divination. ⁴⁷ First, the oracles frequently contain requests for cultic offerings and temple furnishings. ⁴⁸ Though such demands may have been a nuisance to the court, they nevertheless assume a reciprocal relationship between the king and the gods, implying divine recognition of the king’s right to rule. Second, many oracles express the deity’s approval of the king explicitly. In both Old Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian sources, deities promise to care for and fight on behalf of favoured kings. ⁴⁹ These two themes concern the relationship between the gods and the king, yet, as Lenzi (2008: 227) observes, ‘oracles and politics go hand in hand’. Both the cultic demands and the overt declarations of support communicate as much about human actors as they do about the will of the gods. On a practical level, through oracles, human representatives of the gods acknowledge the king’s legitimacy in exchange for his ongoing patronage of their temples. Similarly, oracles pledging a deity’s support communicate the political backing of cultic centres within the realm. This makes the oracles’ geographic provenance significant. When sent to the king from afar, oracles conveyed the affirmation of local deities as well as the sentiments of cultic officiants. Zimri-Lim of Mari received favourable oracles from Dagan that were uttered throughout his realm and beyond. Such oracles would have reassured the king of the distant cities’ continued loyalty. ⁵⁰ The same pattern obtained in the decades after the fall of Mari, when Hammurapi of Babylon legitimized his reign over Zimri-Lim’s former kingdom by claiming to have received oracular endorsement, again from Dagan, the deity venerated throughout the Upper Euphrates region. ⁵¹ The words of the gods served as a ready vehicle for affirming the legitimacy of a king’s rule.

The Mesopotamian evidence clarifies what an ancient West Asian audience familiar with royal divination would have immediately understood about Ehud’s oracle. ⁵² By delivering Israel’s tribute, Ehud displays his loyalty to Eglon. Then he further proves himself a willing collaborator with the Moabite regime when he promises critical political intelligence in the form of a דבר סתר (‘secret message’). ⁵³ When Ehud reveals the oracular nature of the message, claiming to relay a דבר אלהים (‘word of a deity’) in v. 20, Eglon anticipates divine affirmation of his reign in the Cisjordan. ⁵⁴ The king might expect an overt endorsement from the deity of the land. This would be similar to two biblical texts in which secret oracles convey divine approval of individual kings. In 1 Sam. 9.27, Samuel pulls young Saul aside to disclose a confidential דבר אלהים: Yahweh has chosen Saul to rule all of Israel. ⁵⁵ Likewise, in 2 Kgs 9.4–13, an oracle giver meets privately with Jehu and declares the warrior king over Israel. These scenarios are not precisely analogous to that of Judg. 3.19–20, yet they posit comparable situations, with an individual secretly conveying divine support for a (soon-to-be) king by means of an oracle. Whether or not Eglon expects an explicit declaration of divine favour, he certainly takes the deity’s willingness to communicate as recognition – by both the deity and its earthly, Israelite representative(s) – of his royal authority. This interpretation of Eglon’s response to the oracle coheres with Josephus’s assumption that Ehud’s divine message (now oneiromantic revelation) carries happy tidings. In recounting Eglon’s reaction to Ehud’s announcement, the Jewish historian adds a telling detail: ‘The king, in his joy over the dream, leapt up from his throne’ (Ant. 5.188). ⁵⁶ Eglon is delighted here, for Josephus understands that the king expects to receive good news from Ehud’s deity. ⁵⁷

Several scholars recognize Eglon’s expectation for a favourable oracle without relating this to the question of the text’s humour. ⁵⁸ Once again, Raskin’s theory is useful for coaxing the comical out of the text. In the initial script, Ehud’s דבר אלהים signals to Eglon the approval of his subject’s deity and, implicitly, the allegiance of Israel’s cultic and political elite. Then, the incongruity between Eglon’s expectation and Ehud’s attack triggers a switch of script. In the second script, Ehud’s דבר אלהים is no oracle but a ‘divine thing’ (i.e. the dagger?). Insofar as the two scripts relate to the king’s (in)ability to access (suprahuman) information, they form a binary that Raskin (1985: 223–26) observes is typical of humour denigrating political figures: ‘The ignorance or incompetence of a politician is a very popular ground for considering him or her bad for the job, and the involved opposition is, of course, between the script of a competent and knowledgeable leader and its negation.’ ⁵⁹ As an ancient West Asian text, Judg. 3.12–30 humorously signals incompetence and ignorance specifically by depriving Eglon of an expected message from a god.

4. Conclusion: The Target and Function of the Satire

At first glance, Eglon’s fat and Ehud’s oracle may appear unrelated, yet closer examination reveals that they serve in tandem the text’s satirical aims. The king’s fulsome body and his appetite for oracles are cultural symbols of material and ideological domination. The humour consists in the incongruity between these symbols and the unexpected significance they take on when Ehud butchers the king. The text thus incites laughter at a foreign oppressor whose reliance on divination fails him. Whatever the historical circumstances of the story’s initial composition, I suspect that ancient Hebrew scribes had no difficulty connecting Eglon to the real world they themselves inhabited. ⁶⁰ The Mesopotamian kings who dominated the southern Levant from the ninth through the fourth century BCE relied on technologically sophisticated methods of divination that were known and repudiated by at least certain biblical scribes. ⁶¹ If Christianson (2003: 76) is correct in suggesting that Moab is a cipher for any foreign power, the text may well allude to rulers of kingdoms beyond the Euphrates (rather than merely across the Jordan). Nevertheless, the critique remains subtle, embedded as it is within an entertaining tale of an ancient hero, and thus approaches Amit’s (2000: 93–97) description of ‘hidden polemics’. The rhetorical persuasion of hidden polemics, according to Amit, depends on avoiding direct confrontation and instead guiding readers imperceptibly in the direction of a contested point of view. ⁶² Divination is indisputably a matter of controversy for some biblical writers, and it is the subject of overt polemics in several texts. ⁶³ Yet the Eglon pericope avoids explicit condemnation of any form of mantic activity, instead hinting at divination as the polemical concern with a few signposts: the various cultic allusions, the ‘monoliths’ (פסילים) at Gilgal (vv. 19, 26) and, most obviously, the pretended oracle in v. 20. ⁶⁴ The position advanced in Judg. 3.12–30 is that the divinatory apparatus of the foreign ruler is fallible, subject to manipulation and ultimately an unreliable source of security.

In this article, I draw on Raskin’s theory of humour, yet other humour theories are also relevant. For example, the humorous assassination suits Superiority Theory well, insofar as it effects a delight in the inferiority of Israel’s enemy. The text manifests an ‘ethic of tricksterism’, to use Niditch’s (2008: 58) turn of phrase, as ‘the weak overpowers the powerful’ while humorously subverting expectations and redefining social and political relations. ⁶⁵ Relief theory, too, illuminates the function of this satirical text. Gilmore (2018: 183–86) observes that satire does not always involve an intention to alter concrete situations. Rather, by ridiculing the objectionable, satire ‘makes life somewhat easier to bear’, acting as ‘a safety valve, allowing dissatisfaction with an existing state of affairs to dissipate itself harmlessly’. The satirical depiction of royal divination in Judg. 3.12–30 is comprehensible, then, as a coping strategy of local scribal elites living in unsatisfactory circumstances. ⁶⁶ With violent opposition to foreign rule untenable, the text wields humour as an ‘“irregular” weapon of resistance’, offering some relief in a context of subjugation. ⁶⁷ Evidently, the text’s vulgar humour illustrates a transhistorical, transcultural strategy for dealing with displeasing political leadership, so that what Mbembe (1992: 10) writes of popular humour in the West African post-colony applies equally well to the dynamics of derision in the biblical text: ‘The obesity of men in power, their impressive physique and, more prosaically, the flow of shit which results from such a physique – these appeal to a people who can enjoy themselves with mockery and laughter, and, sometimes, even join in the feast’. Eglon’s oozing corpse and the odour it emits, along with the absence of any actual oracle, contribute to a crude revelry indeed. And it is precisely amid this merriment that Judg. 3.12–30 does its most serious and enduring work. The text’s immensely corporeal humour underscores the humanity of the scribe(s) who produced it at the same time that it rebukes any oppressor who would claim the favour of Israel’s deity.