Judges · chapter 9 of 21
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Judges 9 tells how Abimelech, son of Gideon and a concubine, kills his seventy brothers at Ophrah except Jotham and has himself made king at Shechem. Jotham curses him with the fable of the trees. God sends a spirit of ill will between Abimelech and the men of Shechem, and Abimelech destroys Shechem and dies at Thebez, struck by a millstone that a woman drops on him.
After Gideon's death Israel turned to the Baals. Judges 9 is an account with no judge or deliverer: the story of a man who wants to be king by violence. It is a warning about power sought without God and about how injustice returns on the one who commits it.
Abimelech, son of Gideon and a concubine from Shechem, persuades his mother's relatives and the people of Shechem to make him their ruler instead of Gideon's seventy sons. They give him seventy pieces of silver from the temple of Baal-berith, with which he hires reckless men. At Ophrah he kills his seventy brothers on one stone. Only Jotham, the youngest, escapes by hiding. The people of Shechem make Abimelech king by the oak of the pillar.
Jotham climbs Mount Gerizim and tells a fable: the trees want a king and ask the olive tree, the fig tree and the vine, but all decline. Only the bramble accepts and warns that, if they do not act in good faith, fire will come out of the bramble and devour the cedars of Lebanon. Jotham applies the fable: if they have acted with integrity toward the house of Gideon, let them rejoice, and if not, let fire come out from Abimelech against Shechem and from Shechem against Abimelech. Jotham flees to Beer.
Three years later God sends a spirit of ill will between Abimelech and Shechem. The Shechemites set ambushes, and Gaal, son of Ebed, arrives and urges them to rebel. Zebul, the city's ruler, warns Abimelech, who attacks at night, defeats Gaal, destroys Shechem and sows it with salt. He burns the tower of Shechem with its thousand inhabitants. Then he attacks Thebez, and as he approaches the tower a woman drops an upper millstone on his head. Abimelech asks his armor-bearer to kill him so that no one will say a woman killed him. The young man runs him through, and the Israelites go home. God repays Abimelech for the evil he did to his brothers and the Shechemites for their wickedness.
References follow ESV book names and verse numbers. Read each verse in your Bible before the explanation.
Abimelech kills his seventy brothers on a single stone, but Jotham, the youngest, survives. The text shows how far ambition goes when it stops at nothing.
The bramble agrees to be king of the trees and asks them to take refuge in its shade. The fable mocks a useless ruler who offers protection and can give only fire.
God sends a spirit of ill will between Abimelech and the men of Shechem, and they deal treacherously with him. God uses human wickedness itself to turn it back on those who committed it.
God repaid Abimelech for the evil he did to his father by killing his seventy brothers. The chapter ends saying that God does justice, even if late and in unexpected ways.
6 questions with answers and references, ready for Sunday school, small group or a Bible quiz night.
Answer: Seventy, on one stone at Ophrah. — Judges 9:5
Answer: Jotham, the youngest. — Judges 9:5
Answer: The olive tree, the fig tree and the vine. — Judges 9:8-13
Answer: The bramble. — Judges 9:14-15
Answer: A spirit of ill will. — Judges 9:23
Answer: A woman dropped a millstone on his head, and his armor-bearer finished him with a sword. — Judges 9:53-54
Judges 9 teaches that power won by violence and lies destroys itself. Abimelech did not learn from his father that the Lord is king. For a Christian leader this chapter is a warning against ambition that tramples others, and an invitation to serve with humility.
It also shows that those who back evil share its consequences. The Shechemites helped Abimelech kill Gideon's sons and later paid the price. In a small group we can talk about alliances with people or projects that promise advantages in exchange for dropping principles, and remember that God is not indifferent to injustice.
Judges 9 ends with Abimelech's end and God's justice on Shechem. Israel is left without leadership, and Judges 10 resumes the cycle with minor judges and a new oppression by the Philistines and Ammonites, which leads to the story of Jephthah.
The account means that God rules even over human conflicts and uses them to bring justice. It does not say God causes anyone's sin, but that he lets the treachery of Shechem and Abimelech turn back on them.
The useful trees, olive, fig and vine, prefer to keep bearing fruit rather than rule, and the worthless bramble accepts. Jotham is saying that Abimelech is a useless and dangerous ruler and that Shechem was wrong to choose him.
To avoid the shame of people saying a woman had killed him. His pride, which had led him to kill his brothers, stayed with him to the end, although the text says that what happened was God's doing.