Abimelech - Judges 9

There is a lot going on in chapter 9 and it is the story of Abimelech, who is NOT a judge and was mentioned at the end of chapter 8 as being a son of Gideon but the only one born to a non-Israelite concubine from Shechem. He’s part Canaanite and part Hebrew but is seems implied that he knows that he’s the son of the Israelite ruler, but he’s at odds with his full Hebrew brothers and apparently not being given the respect and status that he felt that he deserved. Abimelech goes to his mother’s family in Shechem and convinces them to make him king over the land. I don’t know why these people would agree to this, but Abimelech must have been super charismatic or something. For some reason, Abimelech’s brother’s being alive is part of the problem so his family takes 10 pieces of silver out of the temple of Ba’al and hires some assassins and they all go over and kill 69 of Abimelech’s 70 brothers, with only the youngest son escaping, named Jotham.

He goes and hides himself in the mountains and while the men of Shechem are around where he’s hiding, he starts preaching to them and tells a parable about mighty olive and fig trees and a grape vine who are asked to become king of the forest but they all decline because they say that their purpose is sent from God, therefore, they wouldn’t dare debase themselves to the lowly position of king over people. So finally they as the thorn bush to be a king and of course the thorn bush accepts because the thorn bush doesn’t have a mighty purpose from God, it’s just there to cause pain and suffering so kingship is a major step up. The only caveat is that the thorn bush requires that all the trees live under his shade or he will burn them all to the ground. The problem of course is that thorn bushes don’t offer shade because they are like carpet over the ground. The lesson being, in my mind, that the thorn bush is demanding submission that the trees are capable of providing, therefore, to trust the thorn bush to rule over them was mutually assured destruction. The IM says, “Jotham then prophesied that the people would eventually desire to destroy Abimelech.” Hit your wagon to the Abimelech horse and everyone will die, is what he’s saying, and he’s right. Then when he’s done speaking he runs away and we don’t hear about him again.

Abimelech is king over “Israel” for 3 years, which is interesting. TB says that it’s actually 4 cities, and Google says he was king over “Shechem and the tribal territories of Manasseh,” keeping in mind that Manasseh only had half their tribe on the west side of the Jordan river, so I don’t think that Abimelech ruled over the entirety of Israel and only probably ruled over a small amount of it. There’s an argument I’ve seen that asks if Abimelech is the first king of Israel and I don’t think so, purely based on the very small amount of territory that he controlled, and that he wasn’t called of God. Abimelech is ruling over this section of land and interestingly, he doesn’t rule from Shechem like was assumed he would when they supported him but lived in Israel. Turns out people didn’t like that and they didn’t like how he was ruling overall so the people in Shechem start to turn on Abimelech. There’s a group of robbers who show up to town and start to talk crap about him while they are drinking, so one of the city leaders who’s still loyal to Abimelech calls for him, tells him what’s happening and to come handle it.

Abimelech shows up with his soldiers and start to fight the group of this robber guy and it’s blood and carnage everywhere and the robbers flee and Abimelech chase them, kill them, then turn on the city of Shechem, and he took the city, and slew the people that was therein, and beat down the city, and sowed it with salt.” This is how he treated the city that crowned him king and gave him money to finance fighting his enemies. This is a perfect example of what Satan does, there’s no loyalty, only destruction. Satan can’t wait to destroy all those who follow him just as much as he can’t wait to destroy all those who don’t. It doesn’t matter what you do for him, he will still always seek your destruction. After Abimelech destroys Shechem, fulfilling Jotham’s prophecy, he moves on to destroy the other cities that he rules over because he thinks they betrayed him. In one of those cities, a woman who was above him dropped a mill stone onto his head, and he knows he’s about to die, and asks his servant to kill him so that it wouldn’t be said that a woman killed Abimelech. Pretty treacherous dude here and an excellent example of an evil man and everything that evil people do.