Hi,

What is the spiritual significance of being left or right-handed or ambidextrous? In Judges Chapter 3 it is mentioned that Ehud was left-handed. What was so important that God told us which hand Ehud used? Are there any more people in the Scriptures who are said to favor a particular hand (other than God himself and Ehud)?

R____

Hi R____,

Thank you for your question concerning the spiritual meaning of being right or left-handed.

We generally associate being on the left hand in a negative sense because of what our Lord told us about the sheep and the goats:

Mat 25:31 When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:
Mat 25:32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:
Mat 25:33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.

But in keeping with the character of the Cloud which is Christ, and which saved Israel from the armies of Egypt when Israel was camped by the Red Sea, I hope to demonstrate for you that even the concept of being left handed also has a positive application in the Word of God.

I knew that the tribe of Benjamin was known for the number of men in that tribe who were left-handed, because of this story, which I have always used to demonstrate the most basic meaning of the word ‘sin’:

Jdg 20:15 And the children of Benjamin were numbered at that time out of the cities twenty and six thousand men that drew sword, beside the inhabitants of Gibeah, which were numbered seven hundred chosen men.
Jdg 20:16 Among all this people there were seven hundred chosen men lefthanded; every one could sling stones at an hair breadth, and not miss. [Hebrew: chetah – to sin]

Here is the blessing, such as it was, which Jacob pronounced upon Benjamin just before Jacob died:

Gen 49:27 Benjamin shall ravin as a wolf: in the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil.

Benjamin is described as a wolf whose entire day is spent seeking and devouring his prey. The story about the 700 left-handed men who were so accurate with a sling is the story of the tribe of Benjamin being very nearly wiped out by the other eleven tribes because of the heinous crime the Benjamite men of Gibeah had committed against the concubine of a fellow Israelite of the tribe of Levi who lived in the tribe of Ephraim.

This all suggests to us that the tribe of Benjamin was given to being violent and merciless in character. Some of the more prominent Benjamites mentioned in scripture are Ehud, King Saul, and his very capable warrior son Johathan.

The spiritual significance for us in this violent, ravenous, left-handed, wolf tribe, is that as the Israel of God, we are a violent, left-handed, ravenous beast capable of doing the same heinous works which the men of Gibeah did. But we are also capable of using that same zeal to destroy our fat old man when he dominates us and oppresses us and causes us to act like the beast like men of Gibeah.

That is what Jacob told Benjamin he would come to see of himself “in the latter days”, and that is what we, as that part of the Israel of God, must come to see is within us.

Gen 49:1 And Jacob called unto his sons, and said, Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you that which shall befall you in the last days.

I hope this helps you to see both the positive and the negative spiritual application and spiritual significance of being left-handed.

What I did not realize was that Ehud was also of the tribe of Benjamin:

Jdg 3:15 But when the children of Israel cried unto the LORD, the LORD raised them up a deliverer, Ehud the son of Gera, a Benjamite, a man lefthanded: and by him the children of Israel sent a present unto Eglon the king of Moab.

Your brother in the Christ,

Mike