Oppression from Within

At the end of Judges 8, the Israelites turn to idolatry after the death of their great judge, Gideon. Thus, as chapter 9 opens, the nation is again at the point in the cycle when God allows oppression to come upon His people. That is indeed what happens in this chapter, but the source of the oppression is shocking—it is brought by Abimelech, the son of Gideon by his concubine. “The apostasy of Israel … is punished, not as the former apostasies by a foreign invasion, or the oppressions of any neighboring power, but by [conflict] among themselves,” Matthew Henry writes in his commentary on Judges.

Gideon formally rejected an offer to become king of Israel and establish a dynastic succession (Judg. 8:23). However, there are clues in Judges that he assumed something very like the kingship. Abimelech’s words in Judges 9:1–2, if truthful, provide further evidence of this, but Abimelech may be concocting a scenario to advance his own interests. In any case, going to his concubine mother’s home town of Shechem, he informs his uncles that there is going to be a succession. According to Abimelech, however, all 70 of Gideon’s sons by his wives are going to hold power equally. Wouldn’t it be better, Abimelech asks rhetorically, for one man to rule rather than a committee? And wouldn’t it be better for Shechem, he suggests, if that one were a son of a Shechemite and thus could “bring home the bacon” for the city?

Abimelech’s uncles and the other men of the city have no difficulty grasping how Abimelech might boost their interests. They therefore supply him with money from the temple of their idol, which he uses to hire “worthless and reckless men.” He and this band of thugs then slaughter 69 of his father’s 70 sons. This is a horrendous crime, but no one in Israel rises up to object. Indeed, the men of Shechem gather with “all of Beth Millo,” the city council, and crown Abimelech king “beside the terebinth tree at the pillar that was in Shechem.”

In the spot where Abraham built his first altar in Canaan (Gen. 12:6–7), where Jacob put away the idols of his household (Gen. 35:1–4), and where Joshua called the people to “ ‘serve [God] in sincerity and in truth’ ” (Josh. 24:14)—here Israelites crown a man on the basis of falsehood and insincerity, sinfully serving their own interests rather than God.