Judges 3

I don't know what this says about me--probably something unflattering--but I've always been fascinated with the various ways movie villains receive their comeuppances--the more violent, the better! You expect hard-edged action movie to showcase gory demises, but Disney movies, for all their G-rated family friendliness, often impress me with him much they can get away with.

(Spoiler alert for some Disney movies in this paragraph). In Oliver and Company, two dogs are electrocuted on subway tracks. In The Little Mermaid, the villainous Ursula is basically stabbed with a boat--the point coming out of her back--and, to add insult to injury, is struck by lightning, causing pieces of her tentacles to sink to the ocean below. In The Lion King, Scar is mauled alive, torn to pieces by hyenas. Tarzan features the corpses of Tarzan's parents, while Clayton ends up hanging himself, vines snapping his neck after he falls hundreds of feet. (Just in case you didn't get the point, the film clearly shows the shadow of the hanging body.) The MPAA evidently caught on by the time Atlantis: The Lost Empire rolled around, awarding a PG rating to a film in which the villain crystallizes, coming back to life only to be shattered to pieces by rotating blades. In fact, such a fate calls to mind the demise of the villain in the distinctly R-rated The Last Boy Scout, written by Shane Black and directed by Tony Scott--two filmmakers who probably couldn't make a G-rated film if they tried. And I could write an entire essay on The Hunchback of Notre Dame...

When I was a kid, of course I loved all these "awesome" death scenes. (Now that I'm an adult, nothing much has changed.) Someone gets hanged in a Disney movie? Cool! From what I learned in Sunday school, the Bible also seemed like a squeaky-clean book. Then, on my own, I managed to find the story of Ehud in Judges 3. There's some little bits and bobs about Moab and Ehud's left-handedness (so he can conceal his sword), but that pales compared to King Eglon's truly spectacular death scene. Ehud stabs him in the gut--OK, fine--but then, we get the lovely detail in verse 22: "his bowels discharged." Graphic violence and scatological "humor"--what more do you need in a story that will appeal to stereotypical young males? What's more, Ehud does not pull his sword out (maybe because he couldn't), so the king's "fat closes in over it." Quite a vivid picture that paints in your head, doesn't it?

Adding insult to death, Ehud locks the king's corpse in his chamber. The king's servants loiter around because they think, "He must be relieving himself in the inner room of his palace" (verse 24). Which tells me that Eglon had perhaps used his inner room as a personal outhouse before. I don't know; perhaps he found it more convenient to take care of business in the room he spent the most time in. Maybe that also contributed to his corpulence. Anyway, I have to say that I enjoyed revisiting this magnificently lurid story.

The final verse of this chapter tells the epic tale of Shamgar, "who struck down six hundred Philistines with an oxgoad" (verse 31). Well, if you don't have a sword, you make do with what you have. Reminds me of Hawkeye's unique method for taking out bad guys with his arms and legs restrained in the comic The Ultimates (see image below). Outrageously over-the-top, yes, but I'd expect nothing less from writer Mark Millar, the man who also gave us a 10-year-old girl who stabs villains in the groin and crushes them in car compactors.