Gideon and Abimelech: power and downfall in the Book of Judges

Gideon went from threshing wheat in hiding to defeating the Midianites with 300 men, and refused to become king. His son Abimelech, by contrast, murdered 69 of his brothers to proclaim himself king of Israel and died three years later from a millstone thrown by a woman.

The Book of Judges tells one of those stories that begins with a man in hiding and ends with a kingdom in flames. Between chapters 6 and 9 we find Gideon, the son of Joash, of the tribe of Manasseh, and his son Abimelech. Two generations, two opposite ways of understanding power. The first says he doesn't want it. The second kills to get it.

## Seven years of Midianite plunder

Israel had been suffering Midianite oppression for seven years. It was not an occupation with a governor or garrison: the enemies came up at every harvest, destroyed the fields and left the people in misery. The Israelite response was to cry out to God, and the divine response was an angel who appeared to Gideon while he was threshing wheat hidden in a winepress. In other words, he was working in secret for antiestéticar of losing even the grain.

The angel greeted him as "mighty warrior." Gideon presented himself as the weakest of his family. Before accepting the mission he asked for signs, and the most famous was that of the fleece of wool: one night the fleece was wet with dew while the ground stayed dry, and the next morning it was the other way around. The biblical story spares no confirmations for a man who did not trust himself.

## An altar torn down by night and 32,000 men too many

His first mission was not military. God ordered him to tear down the altar of Baal and the Asherah pole belonging to his father. He did it at night, out of antiestéticar. At dawn, the townspeople demanded his death, and it was his own father who defended him with an argument that sounds like a challenge: if Baal is a god, let him defend himself. That is how he got the name Jerubbaal, "let Baal contend against him."

Then came the war. Gideon gathered **32,000** warriors to face the Midianites. The number was respectable, but God told him there were too many, because Israel might boast of having won by its own strength. First, **22,000** men who were afraid went home. 10,000 remained. The second screening took place by the water: only the **300** who lapped the water with their hands like dogs, instead of kneeling down to drink, were kept. An army that would be ridiculous by any strategy manual.

## Trumpets, jars and torches: the night of the 300

Gideon divided the 300 into three companies. Each man carried a trumpet, an empty jar and a torch hidden inside the jar. At midnight they surrounded the enemy camp, smashed the jars, raised the torches, blew the trumpets and shouted "A sword for the Lord and for Gideon!" The noise, the light and the confusion did the rest: the Midianites began killing one another and fled.

After the victory, the people wanted to make him king. Gideon refused: only God ruled over Israel. With the gold from the spoils he had an ephod made, a priestly garment, which the people ended up worshipping as an idol. Israel had **40 years** of peace while Gideon lived, and he died old after fathering **70 sons**. The man who refused the crown left, unwittingly, the fuse lit.

## Abimelech, the son who did want to reign

Abimelech was the son of Gideon and a concubine from Shechem. When his father died there was no clear leader, and he saw the gap. He convinced the leaders of Shechem, his mother's family, that one man was better than Gideon's 70 legitimate sons. With the money they gave him he hired hitmen and murdered **69** of his brothers on a single stone. Only Jotham, the youngest, escaped.

Jotham climbed Mount Gerizim and told the parable of the trees looking for a king: the olive tree, the fig tree and the vine refuse the throne in order to keep bearing fruit; the thornbush accepts it, offers a false shade and threatens to burn everything down. It was a warning in every sense. The men of Shechem proclaimed Abimelech king anyway. He lasted **three years**.

## The millstone that ended the three-year king

The break came soon. An "spirit of discord" set Abimelech against the leaders of Shechem, who rebelled under the command of one Gaal. The repression was brutal: he destroyed Shechem, sowed its fields with salt and burned the city tower with a thousand people inside. Then he laid siege to Thebez. Getting too close to the fortified tower, a woman dropped a piece of millstone on him from above, crushing his skull.

Mortally wounded by a woman — for a warrior of that time, total dishonor — he called to his armor-bearer: "Draw your sword and kill me, so that it may not be said of me: 'A woman killed him.'" The armor-bearer ran him through. Thus ended the king his father refused to be. The story of Gideon and Abimelech is, in the end, that of two men who faced power in opposite ways, and of a people who in both cases ended up worshipping what they should not have.