When Gideon, the fifth Judge of Israel, delivered the Israelites from the yoke of Midian, the people petitioned him to establish a hereditary monarchy, but he refused:
Then the men of Israel said unto Gideon, Rule thou over us, both thou, and thy son, and thy son's son also: for thou hast delivered us from the hand of Midian. And Gideon said unto them, I will not rule over you, neither shall my son rule over you: the Lord shall rule over you ... And the country was in quietness forty years in the days of Gideon. And Jerubbaal the son of Joash [ie Gideon] went and dwelt in his own house. And Gideon had threescore and ten sons of his body begotten: for he had many wives. And his concubine that was in Shechem, she also bare him a son, whose name he called Abimelech. (Judges 8:22-23 ... 28-31)
And when Gideon died, the Israelites returned to their evil ways and forgot both Gideon and his family:
And it came to pass, as soon as Gideon was dead, that the children of Israel turned again, and went a whoring after Baalim, and made Baalberith their god. And the children of Israel remembered not the Lord their God, who had delivered them out of the hands of all their enemies on every side: Neither shewed they kindness to the house of Jerubbaal, namely, Gideon, according to all the goodness which he had shewed unto Israel. (Judges 8:33-35)
But this account is immediately contradicted in the very next chapter of the Book of Judges:
And Abimelech the son of Jerubbaal went to Shechem unto his mother’s brethren, and communed with them, and with all the family of the house of his mother’s father, saying, Speak, I pray you, in the ears of all the men of Shechem, Whether is better for you, either that all the sons of Jerubbaal, which are threescore and ten persons, reign over you, or that one reign over you? remember also that I am your bone and your flesh. And his mother’s brethren spake of him in the ears of all the men of Shechem all these words: and their hearts inclined to follow Abimelech; for they said, He is our brother. And they gave him threescore and ten pieces of silver out of the house of Baalberith, wherewith Abimelech hired vain and light persons, which followed him. And he went unto his father’s house at Ophrah, and slew his brethren the sons of Jerubbaal, being threescore and ten persons, upon one stone: notwithstanding yet Jotham the youngest son of Jerubbaal was left; for he hid himself. And all the men of Shechem gathered together, and all the house of Millo, and went, and made Abimelech king, by the plain of the pillar that was in Shechem. (Judges 9:1-6)
Jotham, Abimelech’s youngest half-brother, cursed the appointment of Abimelech as King of Shechem. From the summit of Mount Gerizim he delivered the Parable of the Trees:
The trees went forth on a time to anoint a king over them; and they said unto the olive tree, Reign thou over us. But the olive tree said unto them, Should I leave my fatness, wherewith by me they honour God and man, and go to be promoted over the trees?
And the trees said to the fig tree, Come thou, and reign over us. But the fig tree said unto them, Should I forsake my sweetness, and my good fruit, and go to be promoted over the trees?
Then said the trees unto the vine, Come thou, and reign over us. And the vine said unto them, Should I leave my wine, which cheereth God and man, and go to be promoted over the trees?
Then said all the trees unto the bramble, Come thou, and reign over us. And the bramble said unto the trees, If in truth ye anoint me king over you, then come and put your trust in my shadow: and if not, let fire come out of the bramble, and devour the cedars of Lebanon. (Judges 9:8-15)
The moral of the story is that if a good man does not step forward to lead the nation in its time of need, a wicked man surely shall. Jotham fled to a town called Beer and Abimelech reigned untroubled for three years.
Curiously, Jotham is not mentioned again. Instead, it is Abimelech’s own people, the Shechemites, who rebelled against him. Initially, Abimelech was successful, gaining victories over Gaal, the leader of the rebels, with the help of Zebul, the governor of Shechem. But when Abimelech was besieging the rebel city of Thebez, he was mortally wounded.
Historicity
Like several of the stories in the Book of Judges, the rise and fall of Abimelech can be seen as a piece of local history that was spun by later writers into something of national importance. We may accept it as an actual event in the history of a small Canaanite kingdom, one that included the ancient city of Shechem and its environs, while at the same time rejecting the Biblical chronology, which sets these events in the period between the Joshuan Conquest of Canaan and the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah.
Most of the places mentioned in Judges 9 are in the vicinity of Shechem, an ancient Canaanite city in the central highlands of Israel. Shechem is now identified with Tell Balata, in the east of the modern city of Nablus.
ZALMON (PLACE) [Heb ṣalmôn (צַלְמוֺֺֺן). A mountain in Ephraim in the neighborhood of Shechem. In Judg 9:48, Abimelech and his men are said to have climbed Mt. Zalmon and cut brushwood to burn out the rebels who had barricaded themselves in the Tower of Shechem. It has been suggested that this Zalmon may refer to one of the shoulders of Mt. Ebal or Mt. Gerizim, the two mountains flanking Shechem. Another suggestion is that Mt. Zalmon here refers to Mt. Ebal.
THEBEZ (PLACE) [Heb tēbēṣ (תֵּבֵץ)]. A settlement which Abimelech had captured but was never able to leave, having been mortally wounded by a millstone a woman dropped on his head from a tower (Judg 9:50; 2 Sam 11:21). The site is to be identified with Tubas (M.R. 185192), in a fertile region some 13 miles NE of Shechem. The settlement would have been strategically important to Abimelech inasmuch as it stood at a point of easy access to both Shechem and Dothan.
(Freedman 9593, 8773)
The location of Gideon’s residence, Ophrah, is unknown, with several candidates being suggested. One of these, the modern Far’ata, lies about 11 km west-southwest of Shechem. It was first suggested by Claude Reignier Conder of the Palestine Exploration Fund (Conder 162-163). Another candidate lies close to the modern Israeli settlement of Ofra, about 28 km south of Shechem, though this is generally thought to be a different place of the same name (Freedman 984, 6513).
The identity of Beer, where Jotham seeks refuge from Abimelech, is also unknown. One candidate is el-Bîreh, a village about 6 km south-southwest of Ofra (Freedman 984).
The historicity of Jotham and his Parable of the Trees has also been called into question (Berlin & Brettler 530-531).
The Death of Abimelech
Abimelech’s death is memorable:
Then went Abimelech to Thebez, and encamped against Thebez, and took it. But there was a strong tower within the city, and thither fled all the men and women, and all they of the city, and shut it to them, and gat them up to the top of the tower. And Abimelech came unto the tower, and fought against it, and went hard unto the door of the tower to burn it with fire. And a certain woman cast a piece of a millstone upon Abimelech's head, and all to brake his skull. Then he called hastily unto the young man his armourbearer, and said unto him, Draw thy sword, and slay me, that men say not of me, A women slew him. And his young man thrust him through, and he died. (Judges 9:50-54)
This event is curiously reminiscent—preminiscent?—of the death of Pyrrhus of Epirus during the Battle of Argos in 272 BCE:
34: But Pyrrhus, seeing the stormy sea that surged about him, took off the coronal, with which his helmet was distinguished, and gave it to one of his companions; then, relying on his horse, he plunged in among the enemy who were pursuing him. Here he was wounded by a spear which pierced his breastplate-not a mortal, nor even a severe wound-and turned upon the man who had struck him, who was an Argive, not of illustrious birth, but the son of a poor old woman. His mother, like the rest of the women, was at this moment watching the battle from the house-top, and when she saw that her son was engaged in conflict with Pyrrhus she was filled with distress in view of the danger to him, and lifting up a tile with both her hands threw it at Pyrrhus. It fell upon his head below his helmet and crushed the vertebrae at the base of his neck, so that his sight was blurred and his hands dropped the reins. Then he sank down from his horse and fell near the tomb of Licymnius, unrecognised by most who saw him. But a certain Zopyrus, who was serving under Antigonus, and two or three others, ran up to him, saw who he was, and dragged him into a door-way just as he was beginning to recover from the blow. And when Zopyrus drew an Illyrian short-sword with which to cut off his head, Pyrrhus gave him a terrible look, so that Zopyrus was frightened; his hands trembled, and yet he essayed the deed; but being full of alarm and confusion his blow did not fall true, but along the mouth and chin, so that it was only slowly and with difficulty that he severed the head. (Bernadotte 457-459)
The similarity of the two kings’ fates has often been commented on, but no consensus has ever been reached. Is it just a coincidence, or was the death of Pyrrhus mythologized to make a point? We have already encountered a few parallels between Biblical and Hellenic tales—Pinehas and Phineus, for example—and we will be encountering more shortly. So the possibility cannot be ruled out that a Canaanite tale made its way to Greece and somehow became part of the story of Pyrrhus.
Archaeology
There are a number of disruptions in the archaeological record at Shechem, any one of which could represent the events described in Judges 9 (Freedman 8091 ff).
Those conventional historians who recognize the historicity of Abimelech place his reign at the beginning of the Iron Age, which they date to 1200-1125 BCE. At Shechem, this period (Iron IA) corresponds to Stratum XI:
During Iron I, a great deal of building activity of poor quality went on in the city. In Field XIII the LB complex was replaced by several less impressive buildings. Poorly-constructed houses crowded up against the guardrooms of the East Gate. Many of the buildings in Fields VII and IX show traces of destruction by fire. The impression of disorder and economic decline conveyed by the archaeological remains supports the picture of political unrest and turmoil provided by Judg 8:23–35.
The instability of the period culminated in the brief and abortive reign of Gideon’s son, Abimelech (Judges 9). Boling (1969:103) makes the interesting suggestion that Jotham stood on the site of the ruined tribal shrine on Mt. Gerizim when he uttered the parable of the trees and cursed Abimelech (Judg 9:7–21). It would have been an appropriate place from which to protest in the name of the tribal tradition against the royal pretentions of Abimelech.
When the Shechemites rebelled against the upstart king, Abimelech’s revenge was swift and complete. The topography of the region and the archaeological remains illuminate his four-stage campaign against the city. The following reconstruction assumes that the Beth-millo (“the building on the artificial fill,” Judg 9:20) and the Tower of Shechem (Judg 9:47, 49) are one and the same and refer to the temple and its ancillary buildings on the acropolis. The rebel chief Gaal, deceived and taunted by Abimelech’s agent Zebul, brought his troops out of the city in to the Plain of ˓Askar ... Abimelech’s forces, which had slipped down from Mt. el-‛urmeh during the night, ambushed the rebels and drove them back into the city through the East Gate with heavy losses. Abimelech then feigned withdrawal, and the Shechemites, thinking themselves safe came out to work in the fields in the ˓Askar Plain. Abimelech’s troops cut them off from the city and massacred them in the plain. Following up this success, they breached the East Gate and in a day of street fighting captured the lower city, burning and looting as they went. The surviving defenders made a last stand in the temple, but their defenses were burned to the ground and they themselves were slaughtered. The heaps of debris covering the Iron I city are silent witnesses to the completeness of Abimelech’s vengeance.
The city recovered only slowly from the disaster. (Freedman 8098)
In the Short Chronology, which I espouse, Abimelech’s reign belongs in the Canaanite period before Joshua’s Conquest—if it is historical at all. The latter occurred at the very end of the Middle Bronze Age. At Shechem, there was a marked disruption around this time, between Strata XV (MB III) and XVI (LB IB). Not surprisingly, the conventional archaeologists have blamed this on the Egyptians and not on Joshua:
The final destruction of MB III Shechem displays a calculated ferocity and an intent to cause complete destruction of the city. Everywhere there is evidence of intense fire. Half-destroyed buildings were looted and then deliberately pulled down and the bodies of their inhabitants thrown into the street. When the destruction was complete a layer of debris covered the city to a depth of up to 1.6 m. There is little doubt that the Egyptian armies of Ahmose I or Amenhotep I brought this disaster upon the city as they followed up the triumph of Egyptian arms over the Hyksos. Shechem lay in ruins for about a century until its rebuilding in LB IB as a Canaanite city under the domination of the Egyptian Empire. (Freedman 8095)
There is evidence for two earlier destructions of Shechem, both during MB III:
c. MB III (Strata XVI and XV). Extensive building activity, high quality construction in both domestic and public architecture, and an abundance of luxury items among the artifacts show that Shechem reached a peak of prosperity in the last phase of the MB. But the presence of three major destruction levels, the last a veritable holocaust, indicates the troubled and dangerous nature of the times. (Freedman 8094)
The “veritable holocaust” is the one previously mentioned, which I would associate with Joshua. That leaves two destructions levels in the Middle Bronze III Age to accommodate the story of Abimelech. The MB III city was well defended, with a massive wall and towers:
At the beginning of the period (ca. 1650 B.C.), the defensive system of the city was completely rebuilt on a new plan. The outer revetment wall of the Hyksos embankment was used as the base for a massive wall of huge boulders ... Earth obtained in the main from cutting down the embankment was deposited behind the wall, so that it backed up against solid earth and was virtually impregnable to the battering ram. Eight m inside this outer wall ran a slighter circumvallation. The two walls were connected at intervals by cross walls to form a casemate system, the chambers of which were used for domestic and storage purposes.
On the NW side of the city a monumental gateway, 18 × 16 m, pierced the two walls ... Massive towers, projecting beyond the entryway both inside and outside the city, flanked the paved roadway through the gate. Three pairs of projections jutting out from the towers narrowed the roadway to only half its width and effectively divided it into two chambers. Each projection consisted of two huge flat stones (orthostats) set on the long edge 75 cm apart. Three gates, swung between the orthostat pairs, probably closed off the entry in time of war or disorder. (Freedman 8094)
It was during the MB III Age that the so-called Fortress Temple was built, which some have identified with the Tower of Shechem mentioned in Judges 9:
The acropolis of the MB II city was filled over to a depth of almost 4 m to create a level platform. On this filling, a building with walls 5.1 m thick made of well-dressed masonry with a mudbrick superstructure and with its entrance flanked by two large towers was erected ... The massive nature of the structure has earned it the name “fortress temple.” (Freedman 8094)
The Fortress Temple did not survive the “veritable holocaust” at the end of the Middle Bronze Age:
The LB engineers who reconstructed Shechem seem to have done the entire rebuilding in a single, well-planned operation, using the surviving stumps of the walls of major structures as a guide for their work ... In the acropolis area (Fields V/VI) a shrine, of which only portions of the cella were preserved, stood on massive foundations of the MB III temple. Its walls were only about one third the width of those of its predecessor. (Freedman 8095)
This contradicts the opinions of some archaeologists, who place the destruction of the Fortress Temple at the end of Iron IA, which they date to about 1100 BC (Hansen).
Shechem and the Conquest
The role played by Shechem in Joshua’s Conquest has troubled Biblical scholars for generations. Joshua’s military campaign is confined to two theatres of war: a northern and a southern theatre. No conflict takes place in the central highlands, where Shechem stands. Nevertheless, Shechem plays a central role in Joshua’s activities:
The role of Shechem in the Conquest narrative has been an enigma to generations of Bible scholars. After the Israelites blazed a safe trail to central Canaan by defeating Jericho and Ai, they immediately went 34 km north to convene a covenant ceremony in the area of Shechem (Josh 8:30-35). This journey took them through the heart of the central hill country, territory they had not yet conquered. Significantly, women and children participated in this trek (Josh 8:35). It is obvious that the journey was a peaceful one, not a military expedition. In addition, not only did the Israelites travel through an unconquered area, but this event had previously been commanded by Moses (Josh 8:33; Deut 11:29, 30; 27:4-13). It is clear that the Shechem event was planned well ahead of time—before the Israelites set foot in the Promised Land and before the first spear was hurled in the land Canaan.
Following the convocation at Shechem, the Israelites were tricked into making a covenant with the Gibeonites (Joshua 9), followed by the southern campaign (Joshua 10). They then went north to battle a coalition of kings at the Waters of Merom and to destroy Hazor (Joshua 11). No campaigns in the central part of the country, the area controlled by Shechem, are mentioned. At the completion of the Conquest, the Israelites once again returned to Shechem for a covenant ceremony as described in Joshua 24. In addition, one final act was carried out at Shechem, which seemed to be the culmination of the Conquest of Canaan:
And Joseph’s bones, which the Israelites had brought up from Egypt, were buried at Shechem in the tract of land that Jacob bought for a hundred pieces of silver from the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem (Josh 24:32, NIV).
This act of burying Joseph in Shechem demonstrates that a peaceful relationship existed between the Israelites and the people of Shechem. Jacob’s land at Shechem had been willed to Joseph (Gen 48:22), who presumably passed it on to his eldest son Manasseh. The tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim settled in the area under the jurisdiction of Shechem (Joshua 16, 17), perhaps because of the land ownership there. This once again underlines the cordial relations that existed. In the period of consolidation following the Conquest, the tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim did not carry out any military operations within their allotment, but rather against Bethel and other towns at their borders (Judg 1:22-29, 35). (Wood)
Several hypotheses have been advanced to account for these anomalies. Some scholars, for example, reject the historicity of Joshua’s Conquest altogether. Others, who accept the Conquest, theorize that Shechem fell to the Israelites without a struggle, or was already an Israelite city, having been settled before Jacob and his family migrated into Egypt. I am intrigued, however, by a fourth possibility:
A fourth prospect, suggested by John Bimson (1981: 211-214), is that Shechem was already destroyed and abandoned before the Israelites arrived. The possibility that this could be the case is dependent upon one’s chronology for the Conquest. There are two windows of opportunity for this reconstruction. According to the archaeological findings, Shechem was abandoned in the LB IA period, ca. 1500-1450 BC, following the violent destruction at the end of the Middle Bronze Age. (Wood)
In other words, the “veritable holocaust” at the end of MB III was not occasioned by Joshua after all, but took place just before the arrival of the Israelites. Could this destruction be the work of Abimelech as described in Judges 9?
And Abimelech fought against the city all that day; and he took the city, and slew the people that was therein, and beat down the city, and sowed it with salt. (Judges 9:45)
When Joshua went to Shechem, therefore, it was an abandoned ruin. Joshua only used it as a ceremonial site on account of its sacred importance in the earlier history of the Israelites, for it was here that Abram had built an altar to the Lord when he first arrived in the Promised Land:
And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran; and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came. And Abram passed through the land unto the place of Sichem, unto the plain of Moreh. And the Canaanite was then in the land. And the Lord appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land: and there builded he an altar unto the Lord, who appeared unto him. (Genesis 12:5-7)
And that’s a good place to stop.
References
- Adele Berlin & Marc Zvi Brettler (editors), The Jewish Study Bible, Jewish Publication Society TANAKH Translation, Oxford University Press, Oxford (1999)
- Claude Reignier Conder et al, The Survey of Western Palestine: Memoirs of the Topography, Orography, Hydrography, and Archaeology, Volume 2, Sheets 7-16, Samaria, The Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund, London (1882)
- David N Freedman (editor), The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, Doubleday, New York (1992)
- David G Hansen, Shechem: Its Archaeological and Contextual Significance, Bible and Spade, Volume 18, Number 2, Associates for Biblical Research, Akron, Pennsylvania (2005)
- Bernadotte Perrin (translator), Plutarch’s Lives, Volume 9, William Heinemann, London (1920)
- Bryant G Wood, The Role of Shechem in the Conquest of Canaan, in David Merling (editor), To Understand the Scriptures: Essays in Honor of William H. Shea, Pages 245-256, The Institute of Archaeology/Siegfried H. Horn Archaeological Museum, Berrien Springs, Michigan (1997)
Image Credits
- Abilmelech: Guillaume Rouillé, Promptuarii Iconum Insigniorum, Part 1, Page 35, Lyon (1553), Public Domain
- The Lebanese Cedar: © Oliver Bezes (photographer), Barouk, Lebanon, Creative Commons License
- Ephraim: George Philip & Son, Palestine or the Holy Land According to Its Ancient Divisions and Tribes, Liverpool (1852), Public Domain
- The Death of the Fratricide Abimelech: Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (engraver), Die Bibel in Bildern, Georg Wigand, Leipzig (1860), Public Domain
- The East Gate of Shechem: © Bryant G Wood (photographer), Fair Use
- Tell Balata (City Wall and Gate): © TrickyH (photographer), Creative Commons License
- An Artist’s Impression of the Shechem’s Temple of Baal Berith and City Gate: © Balage Balogh (artist), Archaeology Illustrated, Fair Use
- The Ruins of Shechem: The Holy Land Satellite Atlas, Volume 1, Page 100, Røhr Productions, (1999), © Rohr Productions Ltd & CNES, Fair Use
