Judges: Chapter 9

 

We sprout

from the earth's navel

dragging along the hills, trees and thorns

in the ever-battle 

of fathers and sons

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If the previous chapter set Gideon within a wider family context, this family now takes center stage, as the Gideon saga continues to resonate forward and backwards in time. Certain key elements of his story are retroactively highlighted when seen in this broader context.
Abimelech, the son of Gideon’s concubine, introduced at the closing of the previous chapter, moves to the center, as he acts decisively  to take the kingship his father had rejected.  In an Oedipal drama, Abimelech moves to his “mothers family’s”, claiming their kinship and brotherhood, while murderously turning on his brother’s-through-his father.

This Oedipal killing of the father highlights that Gideon’s journey simlarily began by killing his father’s sacred bull. The initial, sublimated, struggle ended up bringing father and son together: Yoash defended his son, and brought to his symbolic rebirth as Jerubal.

Abimelekh, by contrast, turns on Jerubal, killing his 70 sons on “one stone.” Yet throughout, he expresses and works through elements of his father’s own personality, revisiting key moments and struggles. Like Gideon, Abimelekh has a special focus on “the sons of my mother.” Both father and son are related to the symbolic number of 70, with Gideon’s 70 sons countered by Abimelekh’s 70 pieces of silver. Abimelekh seems to be the only of Gideon’s sons to have inherited his father’s military might and strategy—like his father, he “divides the camp.” Like his father, he leads by example, telling his men to “watch and do as I do.”Gideon retraced Jacob’s journey to Cannan via Penuel and Succoth; Abimelekh takes the next step to Shechem. Gideon externalizes Jacob’s interior and lonely battle in Penuel, turning Jacob’s mysterious  struggle where  he “sees God face to face” into a ruthless battle over his authority with the people of Penuel. Abimlekeh revisits and heightens the treachery and violence that Jacob found in Shechem (indeed, the chapter highlights the intertextual connection by openly alluding to “Shechem the son of Hamor”).

Abimelekh—“My father is king”—his very name refers to the troubled relationship with his father, and specifically around the issue of authority and power. Indeed, it is Gideon himself who “puts” (veyasem, rather than the usual “ve yikra”) this name on him, pointing to unresolved tensions in the issue of kingship. Gideon is first offered the kingship after he uses the very elements of the earth—brambles and thorns—to punish the people of Succoth who mock his authority. Abimelekh, described by Yotam as a  “thornbush,” fights Gaal from the “navel of the earth” (Tabur haAretz), and his army appears like the shadows of the hills. He later cuts down trees and walks with them (in a Macbeth-like scene) to attack the rebels in the tower. Whereas Gideon razes the tower of Penuel, Abimelekh is killed by a grindstone flung by a woman in the tower.   

“I will not rule over you, nor will my son rule over you. God will rule over you,” Gideon declared. Yet once the idea of earthly authority was raised, it seems impossible to contain. You will be ruled, Abimelkh tells the people of Shechem. So better by me your kinsmen, than by Gideon’s 70 other sons. The people of Shechem accept this argument, and crown Abimelekh, who “acts with authority (veyesar) over them.” When they tire of Abimelkh’s rule, they turn to Gaal the son of Eved (lit. servant, slave), who explicitly centers the argument around the issue of avdut-slevery/ service. Why should we serve Abimeklkh, he asks, we might as well serve Hamor. The issue is only power and who wields it.

An alternative to this power-based vision of the inevitable domination of the strong is offered by Yotam, Gideon’s youngest and only surviving son. Yotam (lit “the orphaned one”) presents an opposing vision—both of kingship, and of Gideon. If Abimelkh expresses Gideon’s ruthless assertion of authority, Yotam highlights his vulnerability, his deep fear and bravery—how he “sent forth his soul to save you.” In a similar fashion, Yotam’s famous parable of the trees presents kingship as an insufficiency of self, rather than the right of might: the olive, the fig, the vine, are all too full of their own blessings to seek to lord over others. It is only the barren thornbush that is willing to rule, as it has nothing intrinsic to lose. What is more, kingship, Yotam argues, is a mutual system: if Abimelekh was raised justly, “rejoice in him and let him rejoice in you.” But if the rise of Abimelekh was unjust, “let a fire shoot forth from Abimelkh and destroy Shechem and a fire set forth from Shechem and destroy Ebimelkh.” The ruler and the ruled each define the other, building or destroying each other simultaneously. Rather than a hierarchal relationship in which one dominates the other, it is a circular relation of mutual definition.
Yotam delivers his parable from atop Har Grizim, location of the primal covenant with God, in order to “Make the people of Shechem heard to God.” This also introduced a fundamental difference between Gideon and Abimelekh’s Odeipal struggles: Gideon acts on God’s command, and fights on God behest. Though he asserts authority, he seeks to make “God rule over you.” Yotam and Abimelekh struggle over their father’s legacy, and Yotam calls God in on his side. The story ends with the victory of Yotam’s narrative: the fire indeed sets forth and destroys both Shechem and Abimelkh. “God repaid Abimelech for the evil he had done to his father by slaying his seventy brothers; and God likewise repaid the people of Shechem… so the curse of Jotham son of Jerubbaal was fulfilled…”.]