Judges 9
Judges 9 is a sobering study of ambition, compromise, character, and consequences. It begins after the death of Gideon, also called Jerubbaal, when one of his sons, Abimelech, decided that he wanted to rule. Gideon himself had refused Israel’s offer of kingship, declaring, “I will not rule over you, neither shall my son rule over you: the LORD shall rule over you” (Judges 8:23). But Abimelech had other ambitions.
Abimelech went to his mother’s relatives in Shechem and appealed to their family loyalty. Would they rather be ruled by all seventy of Gideon’s sons, he asked, or by one man who was their own “bone and flesh”? The men of Shechem chose family connection over character and gave Abimelech seventy pieces of silver from the house of Baalberith. With that money he hired what Scripture calls “vain and light persons,” went to his father’s house at Ophrah, and killed his brothers “upon one stone.” Only the youngest, Jotham, escaped.
With Gideon’s other sons out of the way, the men of Shechem gathered together and made Abimelech king.
When Jotham heard what they had done, he climbed Mount Gerizim and called out to them with a parable. In his story, the trees decided they needed a king. They first approached the olive tree, then the fig tree, and finally the vine. Each refused because it was already producing something valuable. The olive had its oil, the fig its sweetness and good fruit, and the vine its grapes. None was willing to abandon its God-given usefulness just to be promoted over the others.
Then along came the bramble.
The bramble had no fruit worth mentioning but was quite willing to become king. You can almost picture it waving its crusty branches and shouting, “Pick me! Pick me!” It would be funny if the reality behind the story weren’t so tragic. Gideon’s sons were dead because Abimelech wanted a crown.
There’s an important distinction here between prominence and usefulness. Jesus said, “Whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant” (Matthew 20:27). In God’s kingdom, position is never the measure of a person’s value. Fruit is. The olive tree, fig tree, and vine didn’t need a throne to prove they were useful; their fruit already testified to that.
And Jotham’s choice of location makes his warning even more interesting. Mount Gerizim was the very mountain God had designated as the place from which Israel was to hear the blessing: “thou shalt put the blessing upon mount Gerizim” (Deuteronomy 11:29; see also Joshua 8:33). There’s something beautifully ironic about a warning of judgment coming from the mountain of blessing. God’s warnings are not the opposite of His blessings; sometimes they are part of them. He exposes where a path leads while there’s still opportunity to recognize what we have chosen. A warning may not feel much like a blessing when we hear it, but neither does a guardrail when we run into it. Both are there to keep us from going over the edge.
The men of Shechem certainly needed the warning because they hadn’t measured Abimelech by his fruit. They had supported him because, as they said, “He is our brother” (Judges 9:3). Personal connection had overruled moral discernment. Instead of asking whether his character was trustworthy or whether God was leading him, they chose the man who belonged to them. It’s remarkably easy to excuse behavior in someone we like, admire, agree with, or identify with that we would immediately recognize as wrong in someone else. Yet truth doesn’t change depending upon whose name is attached to it. “To the law and to the testimony” (Isaiah 8:20) remains the measuring stick.
Jotham’s bramble then makes an almost comical offer with a very serious meaning: “If in truth ye anoint me king over you, then come and put your trust in my shadow” (Judges 9:15).
What shadow? It was a thornbush!
Yet that is exactly what counterfeit security does. It promises shelter it doesn’t possess. Abimelech offered Shechem the kind of leadership they thought they wanted, but the character of the man they empowered would eventually become their destruction.
Jotham ended his warning by telling Shechem that if they had acted honorably toward Gideon’s family, then they could rejoice together with Abimelech. But if they had not, he pronounced a chilling consequence: “let fire come out from Abimelech, and devour the men of Shechem… and let fire come out from the men of Shechem… and devour Abimelech” (Judges 9:20).
Then Jotham fled, and for three years, nothing in the story suggests that judgment was coming.
Abimelech had his throne, his army, and three uninterrupted years of rule. Anyone judging by circumstances alone might have concluded that he had gotten away with everything. But God’s silence should never be confused with God’s approval. Ecclesiastes 8:11 says, “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.” Consequences do not always arrive immediately, but delay doesn’t mean God has forgotten.
After three years, the alliance between Abimelech and Shechem began to fracture. Scripture says that God sent an evil spirit between them, and the men of Shechem “dealt treacherously with Abimelech” (Judges 9:23). The people who had helped put him on the throne now turned against him.
Into that unrest came Gaal, who openly challenged Abimelech’s right to rule and boasted that he could defeat him. Zebul, the ruler of the city and an ally of Abimelech, secretly warned Abimelech of the rebellion. Battle followed. Gaal was driven out, Abimelech attacked Shechem, destroyed the city, and sowed it with salt.
There’s a painful lesson in the fact that Shechem was eventually destroyed by the very kind of man they had willingly supported. Abimelech’s cruelty had been acceptable while it was directed against Gideon’s family and helped Shechem obtain the ruler it wanted. It looked considerably different when that same cruelty came knocking on their own door. Character doesn’t suddenly become safe because it’s temporarily working in our favor. If we knowingly tolerate dishonesty, manipulation, cruelty, or compromise because it benefits us today, we shouldn’t be surprised when that same spirit harms us tomorrow. “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Galatians 6:7). Seeds are stubborn little things; they insist on producing after their own kind.
But the story wasn’t finished. When the people associated with the tower of Shechem heard what had happened, about a thousand men and women fled into a stronghold connected with the house of their god Berith. That detail is almost painfully ironic. The temple of Baalberith had supplied the seventy pieces of silver that helped finance Abimelech’s rise to power in the first place. Now, when everything was collapsing, the people fled to that same religious system for protection.
It couldn’t save them.
Abimelech climbed Mount Zalmon, cut down a branch, placed it on his shoulder, and ordered his men to do the same. They piled the branches against the stronghold and set it on fire, killing those inside.
Suddenly Jotham’s words from three years earlier don’t sound nearly so figurative: “Let fire come out from Abimelech, and devour the men of Shechem” (Judges 9:20).
The bramble finally produced something, but unfortunately, it was fire.
That might have been the end of Shechem, but it wasn’t yet the end of Abimelech. He moved next against the city of Thebez and captured it. Once again the inhabitants fled into a fortified tower. And remarkably, Abimelech reached for the same solution that had worked at Shechem. He headed straight for the door intending to burn this tower too. His toolbox had become rather limited: Have problem, add fire.
Yet the method that had brought him victory before carried him directly beneath the millstone that ended his life.
That makes me think about how easily success can persuade us that God approves of the way we achieved it. If a questionable method gets results, we’re tempted to conclude that the results justify it. But Scripture never measures righteousness by whether something “worked.” For a long time, Abimelech’s choices had brought him exactly what he wanted. He had murdered his brothers, gained a throne, ruled for three years, defeated his enemies, and destroyed Shechem. Nothing about those accomplishments made the path righteous. Proverbs 16:18 says, “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.” Eventually Abimelech walked beneath the wrong tower.
And what an ending! This man had spent his life grasping for prominence, power, and a name for himself, yet God used “a certain woman”—someone Scripture does not even bother to name—to bring him down. Abimelech had wanted everyone to know who he was, while God accomplished His purpose through someone whose name we still don’t know. The contrast with Jotham’s parable is hard to miss. Abimelech spent his life trying to become important, yet once again Scripture reminds us that God doesn’t require prominence to accomplish something significant.
But the detail that really stops me is Abimelech’s final request. With his skull crushed and death only moments away, he was still worried about his reputation. He hurriedly ordered his armourbearer to kill him, “that men say not of me, A woman slew him” (Judges 9:54). His armourbearer obeyed.
Abimelech couldn’t save his life, but bless his heart, he was still trying to edit the obituary. Pride had followed him all the way to the finish line.
And the irony is that his attempt didn’t even work. Generations later, Scripture still tells us exactly what happened. In 2 Samuel 11:21, the incident is remembered with the words, “Who smote Abimelech the son of Jerubbesheth? did not a woman cast a piece of a millstone upon him from the wall, that he died in Thebez?” Abimelech could order his armourbearer to change the final detail, but he couldn’t change the truth. How sobering is that!
We can spend an enormous amount of energy managing appearances, explaining ourselves, protecting our image, and trying to control what others think, but God deals in truth. “Man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). Abimelech’s final act was essentially damage control, but there comes a point when managing the narrative cannot change the reality. I would much rather allow God to correct what is wrong in my heart than become skilled at making it look better from the outside.
The final two verses put the entire chapter into perspective. What might have looked like a chaotic series of betrayals, battles, and unfortunate circumstances was not outside God’s knowledge or His justice. “Thus God rendered the wickedness of Abimelech, which he did unto his father, in slaying his seventy brethren” (Judges 9:56). Then Scripture adds that God also rendered the evil of the men of Shechem upon their own heads, “and upon them came the curse of Jotham the son of Jerubbaal” (verse 57).
Jotham had spoken his warning years earlier and then disappeared from the narrative, but God’s Word had not disappeared with him. What God had said eventually caught up with everyone involved.
That seems to be the thread tying the entire chapter together. Shechem repeatedly placed its confidence where it did not belong—in family connection, human power, ruthless leadership, and finally a false god. Abimelech placed his confidence in ambition, force, repeated success, and ultimately his own reputation. Jotham’s bramble had promised a shadow, but when the fire came, there was nowhere beneath it to hide.
God’s justice doesn’t have to hurry in order to be certain, and we don’t have to mistake His patience for indifference. Abimelech had three years in which evil seemed to be doing quite well for itself. It wasn’t the end of the story. God simply had not finished writing it yet. And when God finally put the period at the end of Abimelech’s sentence, one small piece of millstone was enough.
It’s difficult not to hear at least an echo of the final conflict described in Revelation. Judges 9 is not presented as a direct prophecy of those events, but the spiritual pattern is strikingly familiar. Once again, human authority and false worship become entangled, allegiance is misplaced, and powers that once cooperated eventually turn upon one another. Revelation 17 describes earthly powers ultimately turning against the religious system they had supported, even saying they “shall burn her with fire” (Revelation 17:16). The underlying warning is much the same: anything humanity places where God alone belongs will eventually prove incapable of saving us.
That makes Jotham’s bramble even more sobering. The final issue in Revelation is also one of worship and allegiance—whether we will trust human authority or remain faithful to the Creator. God’s final appeal is, “Worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters” (Revelation 14:7). Three thousand years may separate Shechem from the final events of earth’s history, but the heart of the controversy has not changed nearly as much as we might like to think. The safest place has always been, and will always be, under the authority of God.
As you dig into today’s Study Notes, remember: “This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth… for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous” (Joshua 1:8). If you’d like practical help to keep Scripture alive…
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