The Theology of the Oxgoad Text: Judges 3:31
Introduction: Divine Interruptions
The book of Judges is a brutal and bloody record, a litany of Israel's covenant infidelity. The pattern is depressingly familiar: Israel sins, God sends oppressors, Israel cries out, and God raises up a deliverer. It is a cycle of apostasy, affliction, and astonishing grace. We see celebrated saviors like Gideon with his trumpets and torches, and Samson with his jawbone. We have the cunning left-handed warrior Ehud. These are the headline acts.
And then, almost as a footnote, we are given this verse. It is a single sentence, a historical blip. Shamgar appears on the stage of redemptive history, performs one astounding feat, and then exits. He is a divine interruption, a historical hiccup in the grand narrative. There is no call, no genealogy to speak of, no record of his reign, no account of his death. He is just there, and then he is gone. And in our modern age of celebrity pastors and the lust for platform, this is a profound rebuke.
We are tempted to skim past this verse. It feels like a parenthetical remark, a piece of biblical trivia. But there are no parenthetical remarks in the economy of God's revelation. This verse is a dense, packed theological explosive. It is a commentary on the nature of God's power, the character of His salvation, and the kind of instruments He delights to use. God loves to use the nobodies to accomplish the impossible. He delights in taking the mundane, the ordinary, the agricultural, and turning it into a weapon of holy war. He does this to stain the pride of man, to show that the victory is His alone. Shamgar is a one-verse sermon against all human triumphalism. He is the patron saint of those who are faithful in their obscure corners, armed with nothing more than what God has placed in their hands.
This verse is not just about ancient history. It is a paradigm for the Christian life. We live in a world overrun by Philistines, by pagans who have set up their idols in our public square and who mock the living God. And we are tempted to despair, looking at our own meager resources. We think, "What can I do? I am no one. I have no sword, no spear, no platform." To which this verse thunders its reply: "Take up your oxgoad."
The Text
Now after him was Shamgar the son of Anath. And he struck down 600 Philistines with an oxgoad; and he also saved Israel.
(Judges 3:31 LSB)
A Man from Nowhere (v. 31a)
The verse begins with a simple transition:
"Now after him was Shamgar the son of Anath..." (Judges 3:31a)
He comes "after him," that is, after Ehud. Ehud's deliverance secured eighty years of rest for Israel. But sin is a stubborn weed, and the Philistines were a persistent threat. The name Shamgar is not a typical Hebrew name. It is likely Hurrian. And his father's name, Anath, is the name of a Canaanite war goddess. This is scandalous. It is as if God reached into the pagan hinterlands, found a man with a pagan name from a pagan background, and said, "You're up."
This is a consistent pattern in Scripture. God's grace is not bound by our bloodlines or our resumes. He calls Rahab the prostitute. He calls Ruth the Moabitess. He calls Matthew the tax collector. God consistently chooses the outsider, the marginal figure, the one nobody would pick for their team. Why? To make it clear that salvation is of the Lord. It is not about our pedigree, but about His power. It is not about our inherent righteousness, but about His sovereign choice.
The name "son of Anath" may not even be a literal patronymic. It might be a descriptor of where he was from, a town called Beth-anath, or it could even signify that he was a warrior in the mold of this Canaanite deity before his encounter with Yahweh. Whatever the case, he is not from the religious establishment. He is not a priest or a prophet. He is an outlier. And this should be a profound encouragement to every Christian who feels like an outsider. God's call is not limited to the stained-glass corridors of the institutional church. He finds his champions in the most unexpected places.
An Unlikely Weapon (v. 31b)
The text then describes his astounding act with a curious detail.
"And he struck down 600 Philistines with an oxgoad..." (Judges 3:31b)
This is the heart of the story. The Philistines were the technologically superior foe. They had iron chariots and a monopoly on smithing. We learn later in 1 Samuel that there was a time when "there was no blacksmith to be found throughout all the land of Israel, for the Philistines said, 'Lest the Hebrews make themselves swords or spears'" (1 Samuel 13:19). Israel was a disarmed people. They were vulnerable, oppressed, and outmatched.
And into this situation steps Shamgar, not with a sword, but with an oxgoad. An oxgoad was a farmer's tool. It was a wooden shaft, perhaps eight feet long, with a pointed tip for prodding the oxen and a flat, chisel-like end for scraping mud off the plowshare. It was the ancient equivalent of a piece of rebar or a sturdy shovel. It was an instrument of cultivation, not warfare. It was a tool for building, for growing, for tending.
And this is the genius of God. He takes the ordinary, the mundane, the everyday tool of a man's vocation, and He consecrates it for His purposes. Shamgar did not wait for a sword to be delivered from heaven. He did not form a committee to study the feasibility of manufacturing weapons. He used what was in his hand. He took the tool of his daily labor and wielded it in faith.
This is a direct assault on our excuses. We say, "If only I had more money, a better education, a bigger church, a more prominent position, then I could serve God." And God points to Shamgar and says, "What is that in your hand?" For the pastor, it is the Word of God. For the mother, it is the dishcloth and the storybook. For the mechanic, it is the wrench. For the software developer, it is the keyboard. God is not asking for what you do not have; He is asking for you to be faithful with what you do have. Your vocation, your station, your ordinary life, is the very oxgoad God intends to use to strike down the Philistines in your midst.
A Decisive Victory (v. 31c)
The result of this faithfulness is not a minor skirmish. It is a staggering victory.
"...and he also saved Israel." (Judges 3:31c)
He struck down 600 men. This was not a small band of marauders. This was a significant military force. And one man, with one farm tool, routed them. The text is clear: "he also saved Israel." The word "saved" here is the same root used for the other great judges. His deliverance was not second-class. It was not a partial or temporary reprieve. In the economy of God, this one-verse-man is counted among the great saviors of his people.
Notice the word "also." "He also saved Israel." This connects him to the work of Othniel and Ehud before him. It places him in the lineage of God's deliverers. God's work is a great relay race, and Shamgar took the baton for his leg of the race and ran it faithfully. He may not have run for eighty years like Ehud, but he ran his appointed course. Our task is not to compare the length of our ministry or the size of our impact with others. Our task is to be faithful with the oxgoad we have been given, in the field we have been assigned, for the time God has allotted.
This is a profound encouragement for postmillennial faithfulness. The world looks at the church and sees a disarmed people. The Philistines of our age, the secularists, the statists, the sexual revolutionaries, they have the iron chariots of media, academia, and government. They think we are defeated. But they do not understand the theology of the oxgoad. They do not understand that our God delights in using foolish things to shame the wise, and weak things to shame the strong. One man, one woman, one family, standing faithfully on the Word of God and using the ordinary means of grace, can be used by God to strike down giants and save a nation.
The Greater Shamgar
This brief, almost incidental account, is a glorious pointer to the Lord Jesus Christ. Every savior in the book of Judges is a flawed and partial foreshadowing of the one true Savior to come. Shamgar is a type of Christ, but in a very particular way.
Like Shamgar, Jesus came from an unexpected place. "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" (John 1:46). He was the son of a carpenter, not a king. He was an outsider, rejected by the religious establishment of His day.
And like Shamgar, Jesus used an unlikely weapon. The world expected a Messiah with a sword of iron, a political revolutionary who would drive out the Romans. Instead, He came armed with a cross of wood. An instrument of shame, torture, and death. It was the ultimate oxgoad, a tool of humiliation. And with that cross, He struck down not 600 Philistines, but the principalities and powers of darkness themselves. He disarmed them, making a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by it (Colossians 2:15).
The cross looked like the ultimate defeat, but it was the ultimate victory. The world sees a bloody, crucified man and scoffs. The believer sees the wisdom and power of God. God took the most contemptible object in the Roman world and made it the instrument of salvation for the entire cosmos. He took the ultimate symbol of man's rebellion and turned it into the ultimate symbol of His grace.
And through this act, "He also saved" His people. Not just from the Philistines, but from sin, death, and the devil. Shamgar's salvation was temporary. Israel would sin again. But the salvation Jesus accomplished is eternal. He is the greater Shamgar, who with the foolishness of the cross, secured an everlasting deliverance for all who would trust in Him.
Therefore, take heart. Do not despise the day of small things. Do not lament your lack of worldly power or influence. Look to Shamgar, and see what God can do with one faithful man and a piece of wood. Then look to Christ, and see what God has done with one perfect man and a wooden cross. Pick up the oxgoad of your daily calling, and get to work. The Philistines are many, but our God is greater. And the battle belongs to the Lord.