Stony, Scorched Earth
Thursday, March 6
Stony, Scorched Earth
Judges 9:56-57
Thus God returned the evil of Abimelech, which he committed against his father in killing his seventy brothers. And God also made all the evil of the men of Shechem return on their heads, and upon them came the curse of Jotham the son of Jerubbaal.
For a brief summary of events, Judges 9 recounts the fall from grace between Abimelech and his sponsors in Shechem, how the chiefs of Shechem hired a band of raiders to lie in wait for Abimelech, how they exalted a man named Gaal and entrusted him with the task of defying and conquering Abimelech, and how a disgruntled servant told Abimelech the plot, which then led to Abimelech catching Gaal’s army off guard, routing them, and finally chasing them into a fortress and burning it to the ground. Then, afterward, discontent with this massacre of his rivals, Abimelech lays siege to the city of Thebez, shutting the people of the town in, intending to once again destroy it with fire, till that unnamed woman reaches into her shepherdess purse as it were, pulls out a smooth millstone, and flings it into his goliath-sized brow.
But I can’t help but notice that even when evil is repaid to evildoers, even when a demonic unstoppable force like Abimelech meets a demonic immovable object like Shechemite leaders, and both get decimated in the collision, it’s still a tragic tale. Not just because it ends with old walls burnt to a crisp and a heap of dead bodies, but because of the little compromises and corrupt handshakes and seemingly insignificant motions that could’ve been avoided. Like the slow-moving flicker of flame running along a string of gunpowder to a stash of powder kegs, the little embers of greed and envy and deception ignited by Abimelech’s corrupt handshake with these leaders set the firestorm in motion. We can think poetically of the millstone that this unsung heroine hurls from the wall as a chip off the stony block that had been forming around Abimelech’s heart ever since he committed that atrocity three years before.
Oh friend, may we take to heart Jotham’s Parable of the Bramble today. May we see it as a close-to-home warning not to allow any unwholesome ambitions grow among our affections, realizing that a little flare-up can lead to a world of devastation.