Abimelech and Jephthah

Gideon had seventy legitimate sons, for he had many wives; but he also had one illegitimate son, by his concubine Drumah, named Abimelech. After his father’s death Abimelech went off to Shechem, to his mother’s relatives, for they were from that place. He got money from those of them who were notorious for many acts of injustice, came with them to his father’s house, and killed all his brothers except Jotham, who had the good fortune to escape and survive. Abimelech then made the government a tyranny. He set himself up as a lord to do whatever he pleased, instead of obeying the laws, and he dealt most harshly with those who stood up for justice. [a]

Once, when there was a public festival at Shechem and all the people were gathered there, his brother Jotham, whose escape we have described, went up Mount Gerizim, which overhangs the city of Shechem, and shouted so that he could be heard by the crowd, who listened closely to him. He asked them to consider what he was about to say to them. When there was silence, he said that once, when the trees had human voices and held an assembly, they wanted the fig tree to rule over them. But that tree refused, because it was content to enjoy the honor that belonged to it for its own fruit, and not an honor that would have to come to it from outside. The trees did not give up their intention of having a ruler, so they thought fit to offer the honor to the vine. But when the vine was chosen, it used the same words the fig tree had used before and excused itself from accepting the rule. The olive tree did the same. Then the bramble, whom the trees asked to take the kingship (it is a kind of wood good for burning), promised to take the government and to exercise it zealously; but then they must sit down under its shade, and if they plotted to destroy it, the fire that was in it would destroy them. He told them that what he had said was no laughing matter. For although they had received many benefits from Gideon, they were looking on while Abimelech was master of everything, and had joined him in killing his brothers; and Abimelech would prove no better than a fire. When he had said this, he went away and lived in hiding in the mountains for three years, for fear of Abimelech. [b]

A little while after this festival, the Shechemites, who now regretted having killed Gideon’s sons, drove Abimelech out of both their city and their tribe. So he began to plot how he might harm their city. At the season of the grape harvest the people were afraid to go out and gather their fruit, for fear Abimelech would do them some harm. Now it happened that a man of some standing named Gaal had come to live among them, with his armed men and his relatives. The Shechemites asked him to give them a guard during their harvest. He agreed to their request, and the people went out, with Gaal at the head of his soldiers. So they gathered their fruit in safety. While they were at supper in several groups, they ventured to curse Abimelech openly; and the magistrates laid ambushes in places around the city, caught many of Abimelech’s followers, and killed them.

Now there was a certain Zebul, a magistrate of the Shechemites, who had been Abimelech’s host. He sent messengers to tell him how much Gaal had stirred up the people against him, and urged him to lay ambushes in front of the city: Zebul would persuade Gaal to go out against him, which would put it in his power to take revenge on him, and once that was done, Zebul would bring about his reconciliation with the city. So Abimelech laid ambushes and lay in wait with them himself. Gaal was staying in the outskirts of the city, taking little care for his safety, and Zebul was with him. When Gaal saw the armed men coming, he told Zebul that some armed men were approaching; but Zebul replied that they were only the shadows of huge rocks. When they came nearer, Gaal saw the truth and said that they were not shadows but men lying in ambush. Then Zebul said, “Weren’t you the one who reproached Abimelech for cowardice? Then why don’t you show how brave you are yourself, and go and fight him?” Gaal, thrown into confusion, joined battle with Abimelech, and some of his men fell. He fled into the city and took his men with him. But Zebul managed things in the city so well that he got the people to expel Gaal from the city, by accusing him of cowardice in this encounter with Abimelech’s soldiers. [c]

When Abimelech learned that the Shechemites were coming out again to gather their grapes, he set ambushes in front of the city. As they came out, a third of his army seized the gates to keep the citizens from getting back in, while the rest pursued those who were scattered outside, and there was slaughter everywhere. He razed the city to its very foundations, for it could not withstand a siege, sowed its ruins with salt, and went on with his army until all the Shechemites were killed.

Those who had been scattered through the countryside and so escaped the danger gathered on a strong rock, settled on it, and prepared to build a wall around it. When Abimelech learned of their plan, he got there first. He came at them with his forces and laid bundles of dry wood around the place, carrying some himself, and by his example encouraging the soldiers to do the same. When the rock was ringed with these bundles, they set them on fire and threw in whatever by nature caught fire most easily. A great blaze went up; no one could escape from the rock, and every one of them perished, with their wives and children — about fifteen hundred men in all, and a great number of others besides. Such was the disaster that fell on the Shechemites, too great even for grief, except that it came on them justly, for having contrived so great an evil against a man who had been their benefactor.

Having terrified the Israelites with the miseries he had brought on the Shechemites, Abimelech openly aimed at greater power than he already had, and seemed to set no limit to his violence short of destroying everyone. Accordingly he marched to Thebez and took the city by surprise. There was a great tower in it, where the whole population fled, and he prepared to besiege it. As he was rushing violently near the gates, a woman threw a piece of a millstone on his head. Abimelech fell, and asked his armor-bearer to kill him, so that his death would not be thought the work of a woman; and the man did as he was told. So he suffered this death as punishment for the wickedness he had committed against his brothers and for his insolent cruelty to the Shechemites. The disaster that befell those Shechemites happened just as Jotham had predicted. And the army that was with Abimelech scattered when he fell, and went home. [e]

After this Jair the Gileadite, of the tribe of Manasseh, took the government. He was a fortunate man in other ways too, but especially in his children, who were of good character. There were thirty of them, very skilled horsemen, and they were entrusted with the government of the cities of Gilead. He held the government twenty-two years and died an old man, and he was buried at Kamon, a city of Gilead. [f]

Now all the affairs of the Hebrews were run haphazardly and drifted toward disorder and contempt for God and the laws. So the Ammonites and the Philistines despised them and laid waste the country with a great army. Having taken all of Perea, they grew so insolent as to try to take possession of all the rest too. But the Hebrews, now chastened by the disasters they had suffered, turned to prayer to God. They brought him sacrifices and begged him not to be too severe with them, but to be moved by their prayers to give up his anger against them. So God became more merciful to them and was ready to help them.

When the Ammonites invaded the land of Gilead, the people of the country met them at a certain mountain, but they lacked a commander. Now there was a man named Jephthah, who was powerful both because of his father’s merit and because of the army of hired soldiers he maintained at his own expense. So the Israelites sent to him and begged him to come to their aid, promising him rule over them for his whole life. But he would not accept their plea. He reproached them for not having come to his help when he was wronged, and wronged openly, by his brothers. For they had cast him out, as not having the same mother as the rest, but born of a foreign mother whom his father had brought among them out of his passion for her; and they did this because they despised his weakness. So he lived in the region called Gilead, took in everyone who came to him, wherever they came from, and paid them wages. But when they pressed him to accept the rule, and swore to grant him the government over them for life, he led them out to war. [h]

Jephthah took charge of their affairs at once. He stationed his army at the city of Mizpah and sent a message to the Ammonite king complaining of his unjust occupation of their land. The king sent back a message of complaint of his own: he complained of the Israelites’ exodus out of Egypt, and demanded that Jephthah leave the land of the Amorites and give it up to him, as his ancestral inheritance from the beginning. But Jephthah sent back this answer: the king had no just complaint against Jephthah’s ancestors over the land of the Amorites, and ought rather to thank them for leaving the land of the Ammonites to his people, since Moses could have taken that too. Nor would Jephthah withdraw from land that was their own, which God had won for them and which they had now lived in for three hundred years; he would fight them for it. [j]

When he had given them this answer, he sent the envoys away. He prayed for victory and vowed to perform sacred rites, and, if he came home safely, to offer in sacrifice whatever living creature first met him. Then he joined battle with the enemy and won a great victory, and in the pursuit he cut the enemy down all the way to the city of Minnith. He then crossed into the land of the Ammonites, destroyed many of their cities, took their plunder, and freed his own people from the slavery they had endured for eighteen years. But as he came back, a disaster befell him wholly out of keeping with the great deeds he had done: it was his daughter who came out to meet him. She was his only child, and a virgin. At this Jephthah lamented bitterly the greatness of his affliction, and blamed his daughter for being so quick to meet him, for now he must consecrate her to God. Yet what was to happen to her was not unwelcome to her, since she would die because of her father’s victory and the freedom of her fellow citizens. She asked her father only to give her two months to mourn her youth with her fellow citizens, and after that to do what the vow required. He granted her the time she asked, and when it was over he sacrificed his daughter as a burnt offering — an offering neither in keeping with the law nor acceptable to God — without weighing what those who heard of such a deed would think of it. [k]

Then the tribe of Ephraim made war on him, because he had not taken them along on his expedition against the Ammonites, and had kept the plunder and the glory of the deed to himself. To this he answered, first, that they had known well that their own kinsmen were under attack, and that when they were invited they had not come to help, though they ought to have come quickly, even before being invited. Second, that they were about to do wrong: they had not had the courage to fight their enemies, yet they came rushing against their own kindred. And he threatened that, with God’s help, he would punish them unless they came to their senses. When he could not persuade them, he fought them with forces he sent for from Gilead and made a great slaughter among them. When they were beaten he pursued them, seized the crossings of the Jordan with part of his army that he had sent ahead, and killed about forty-two thousand of them. [m]

When Jephthah had ruled six years, he died, and was buried in his own district, Sebee, a place in the land of Gilead. [o]

After Jephthah’s death Ibzan took the government. He was of the tribe of Judah, from the city of Bethlehem. He had sixty children, thirty sons and the rest daughters, and he left them all alive behind him, having given his daughters in marriage to husbands and taken wives for his sons. In the seven years of his rule he did nothing worth recording or remembering. He died an old man and was buried in his own home town. After Ibzan died in this way, Elon, who succeeded him in the government and held it ten years, did nothing remarkable either. He was of the tribe of Zebulun. [p] Abdon, son of Elon, of the tribe of Ephraim, born in the city of Pirathon, was appointed their supreme ruler after Elon. He is recorded only as being fortunate in his children, for public affairs were then so peaceful and secure that he too did nothing glorious. He had forty sons, and by them left thirty grandchildren. He rode out in state with these seventy, all very skilled horsemen, and he left them all alive after him. He died an old man and was given a magnificent burial at Pirathon. [q]