The Trees Choose a King (Judges 9-10). The story becomes even messier with Gideon’s death: the people returned to idolatry (Judges 8:33), and Gideon’s son Abimelech attempted to set himself up not as judge but as king, killing his seventy brothers (9:5). Only the youngest brother Jotham escaped.

With a setup like that, we might expect that Jotham would later lead the revolt that overthrew Abimelech (that’s how it would have happened, in a classic fairy tale). But in this case, we learned that Jotham fled out of the territory that Abimelech controlled, and was not heard from again. He did, however, leave behind an early biblical fable, “The Trees Choose a King” (9:8-15), the moral of which was a heart cry that Abimelech and his followers would regret their treachery against his brothers.

Abimelech reigned for three years before the leaders of Shechem revolted against him (9:22-29). He proved to be an able strategist as he led his troops in squashing the rebellion, but was struck down when a woman threw a millstone from the top of the tower he was attacking – though even then his pride made him command his armor bearer to kill him with his sword, so that no one would say “a woman killed him” (9:50-54). Thus all of his ambition came to nothing, just as Jotham had predicted.

The book devotes a whole chapter to Abimelech, yet it’s never about justice, but only about his ambition for personal power; in contrast his successor gets just two verses that emphasize his role as deliverer and judge – and how can we not like a man with a name like Tola son of Puah son of Dodo (10:1).

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Save us, O Lord: for like Abimelech we feel the draw of ambition, power, and reputation. Remind us, again and again, that leadership is about serving you in faithfulness, and serving your people by delivering them from oppression and establishing justice for them.