40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Judges 8:29-9:29 (Episode 207)

Episode Date: March 17, 2020

Gideon takes many wives and has a ton of children and one son named Abimelech from a woman who was not his wife. Gideon dies, and the people take their idolatry to the next level. Abimelech puts together a plan to seize power that involves killing all his brothers. And Gideon's youngest son delivers a fable/prophecy to the leaders of Shechem. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org, check out all the other podcasts that are going on over there. While you're over at 1517.org slash podcast, you can check out Hidden Streams, the new podcast featuring Chad Bird, a little devotional stroll through the Psalms. It's got original music, highly produced.

It's not like this. It's not like this show that we're running here. This thing has got a lot of time, a lot of production on the back end put into it. So you should go check that out if you have not already. All right, Chad, it's time to close the door on Gideon and get into a real interesting and bad story. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right.

Yeah, we left Gideon making ephods last time, leading Israel astray. The end of Gideon's story did not end the way his story began. A lot happened to Gideon between that beginning and that ending, and especially toward the end, things were not good. He collected those golden earrings, made the ephod, all of israel went basically literally whoring as the as the hebrew puts it after those idols became a snare to get in his household now it does say as you as you pointed out that the land

had rest for 40 years under the leadership of gideon but those 40 years were not full of orthodox worship where all of israel was just completely devoted to to yahweh we had this continuing as i mentioned in the first episode on judges this continuing canonization of israel throughout the period of the judges it waxes and it wanes but it waxes a whole lot more than it than it uh than it lessens so we're gonna we're gonna see the we're gonna see the the seeds that that gideon was was sowing come to full flower in the life of one of his sons in the next chapter so it happens sometimes you'll you'll have a guy who does some some bad things some wrong things and i mean that in itself is is is not good but you really don't see the true effects until the

next generation right it's wet and that what's the way evil happens a lot of times you know some some bad decisions be made uh some some sins committed but then as time goes on and these aren't dealt with, then the next generation comes along, and it's twice as bad. And if it's not stopped then, the next generation comes along, and it's three times as bad. So we're going to see what happens in the generation after Gideon. Before we get to his actual death, there's a couple of details that are significant here, because they are going to be part of the story in chapter 9 of Judges. It says that, verse 29 is where we're at in Judges 8, it says that Yeruv Baal, or his name is Gideon too, but the names are alternated throughout this narrative,

that he, the son of Joash, went and lived in his own house. Now, I will point out the Hebrew there for lived in his own house could be translated a little bit differently. In fact, it seems a little bit unnecessary to say he lived in his own house. I mean, what's going to live in somebody else's house. But the verb for lived is yashav, which can be translated as lived, yes, but or sit or reign. So given what we know about Gideon's story, the people come to him and say, rule over us. And he says, no, but then he proceeds to act as if he's a king by multiplying gold, and as we'll find out in a minute, by multiplying wives, and by engaging in acts of idolatrous worship. All of those were symptomatic of a lot of the kings later in Israel

and Judah. So yeah, maybe he did just go and live in his own house, but it's also the possibility that there's a nuance to that particular verb that suggests that he was actually not just living in his own house but he was ruling from from his house well you you're about to find out that he had a lot to reign over she did yeah yeah yeah so get this 70 sons now how many brothers do you have i have i have uh i am one of six kids that was that was a large it's a large family it's a large family i mean that's that's a lot for one mom and one dad to take care of but can you imagine i i can't even fathom this being a father doesn't talk about it doesn't even talk about daughters i mean just says 70 sons yeah and then just in case you can't you're like oh well this guy must

have really been uh really he must have really believed in adoption no his own offspring that's what it says for he had and then and then maybe so you have this crazy statement he had 70 sons his own offsprings and then maybe the understatement of the bible for he had many wives didn't see that one coming how many like it's gotta be a lot man yeah yeah i he had a harem let's put it that way and this and that is that just kind of goes with what i was saying about verse 29 i mean what did what did powerful ruling people do in the old testament well they accumulated wives right the kings did it uh and other non-kings who were powerful people they did the same thing this was this is might seem strange to us in our in our particular day and age but it was not strange

whatsoever in in this culture that was one of the ways you kind of flexed your muscles right yeah you accumulated wives and had big families well dude if you if he even had half as many daughters as sons and that's being just being conservative i mean typically you got a 50 50 shot here you know uh so if he has to say say he's like really made a lot of boys so he has half as many daughters that means he's got over a hundred kids yeah it says he lived in his own house i'm assuming either that was a big house or he had multiple multiple homes like did you i mean i remember my mom sometimes would uh she one of us would be in trouble and she would yell the wrong name you know like she'd go through maybe three four names

before she'd get the right one like how many how often does giddy even know the names of all these kids I was gonna say if I had over 100 kids I'd make them all wear name tags yeah yeah yeah would uh would not be easy so but you know if if he had that many kids obviously he had a lot of wives so you would think I mean got a lot of wives so I say well let's just let's say he has uh I don't know what's a good number 20 I mean for 100 kids say I mean they had a lot they you know they're not rolling birth control i mean i know people that had 10 kids i mean all right say say you had 100 kids say 10 wives even they each had 10 kids all right 10 there you go yeah 10 wives a lot of wives we'll go with that number now it seems to me that if you have 10 wives you got

plenty to keep you occupied as a husband way too much way too much but uh not gideon not getting in addition to his 10 wives, he also needed a concubine. So he got one. He goes down to this place called Shechem, which we've heard about multiple times in the scriptures, beginning already back in Genesis 12. That's one of the first places, if not the first place that Abraham stopped, built an altar there. We also hear about Shechem. Significantly, we hear about Shechem in the story of Jacob. Remember when his daughter was kidnapped, raped, right? And then two of the brothers, the two oldest brothers, they came up with this plan for revenge by having all the men of the city circumcised, kind of a treaty they were entering into. And then they went in a couple

of days later when all these guys were in pain and killed everybody. Well, that was Shechem. So Shechem has a history. Well, for some reason, Gideon finds this girl in Shechem and decides that in addition to his 10 wives, he needs a concubine too. So he has a concubine. And this particular concubine is going to conceive a son who is the central character in the next chapter. Says he named him Abimelech. Now let me say right now, because this is going to set the stage for chapter nine, very often names in the Hebrew Bible, and everybody knows this, Hebrew names are sentence names, meaning that there's a whole sentence behind the particular name, right? So Abraham means father of many nations, right? Eve means mother of the living. So very often names

have this sentence definition, if you will. Well, Abimelech is composed of, I guess we could say, three different components. Av is the word for father, just like Avraham, father of many. So av is father the y on there so av is the first person uh pronominal suffix so it means my so my father av is my father and then melek means king so the name i mean there's a couple different things it could mean but chances are abimelech is named by gideon in such a way that Gideon is indicating by the name his own son bears that Gideon understood that he was actually, if not in name, certainly in function, the king of Israel. So Abimelech, his son, means my father is king. It's all about giving your son a name that redounds to your own glory.

That's a great case in point there. We have other Abimelechs in the scriptures, but uh interestingly they're all non-israelites so this kind of falls into that so chances are this concubine that uh that getting hooked up with in shechem she was probably not an israelite so the the son is kind of half israelite half uh half canaanite and his name means my father's king so that kind of finishes out the story gideon it says that he died at a ripe old age and was buried in the tomb of his father joash in ophrah of the abiezrites what happens next though well we have three verses to finish out the chapter it says it came about as soon as gideon was dead that the sons of israel again played the harlot with the bales and made bale barit their god at least we

talked about before uh you might get the impression that this was a kind of a day and night switch but it wasn't Gideon already set the stage for this and maybe Gideon held back a little bit of the idolatrous worship uh it certainly kind of sounds that way for this particular verse that if you thought things if you thought things were bad when Gideon was alive well just wait and see what happened when he when he died so they played the heart out with the bales now the the second name there, Baal or Baal Barit is significant. So as we've discussed multiple times, Baal was kind of the junior deity in the Canaanite pantheon. El was a senior deity, but Baal was a popular god. He was the god of the skies, thunder, those kinds of things. He was the

common god that was worshipped in the Canaanite pantheon. Now Baal Barit, Barit is the word for covenant i just let that sink in for a minute the israelites of course had been called by god out of egypt and he had made a covenant with them he had made a burit with them at sinai so that they were his people and he was their god so when it says that the gideonites i mean excuse me the the israelites were not just playing the harlot with the bales but they actually made Baal covenant, Baal Berit, their God, this was like a double betrayal on their part. It was one thing, I guess this would be kind of like, it's one thing to sleep around, play the heart of the Baals. It was another thing to actually marry the person that you were cheating with. That's kind of

what happened here, the analogy anyway. So they not only made Baal their God, but Baal of the covenant their god so a double betrayal to to god and then verse 34 and 35 finishes this out by saying the israelites didn't didn't remember the lord their god who would deliver them from the hands of their enemies and they did not show kindness to the house of yorev baal to gideon in accord with all the good that he had done to israel so you kind of summarize this no faith no love no faith in the sense that they were no longer believing and worshiping in yahweh the god of the covenant, and they didn't show any love. The Hebrew there is hesed, your favorite word, this covenant loyalty, this covenant faithfulness, this covenant love. They didn't show that hesed

to the household of Gideon. And we're going to find out exactly how they did not show that hesed in the next chapter. So we met the anti-hero of this chapter a few verses before. This chapter, Judges 9 is going to be all about Abimelech. In fact, it's kind of a, it's almost a standalone sort of story. You could take out Judges chapter 9 and almost take it out completely from its context, and it would be a self-contained story. I mean, it, of course, is helpful to understand the background here to get all the details, but it reads kind of like it's from a Canaanite textbook on their own history, because there's very little here that has to do specifically with israel this is this is a story of of assassinations and uh of of fratricide of the

killing of brothers and kind of how how evil leads to the disintegration of society and trust and how in the end you end up with a lot of death a lot of betrayal and people basically having to sleep in the bed that they made because they set this whole thing this whole cycle of violence and betrayal up that's what the that's what the story of Abimelech is all about so Abimelech the son of Gideon he goes to Shechem remember he's from Shechem that's where his mom was she was the the concubine of Gideon he goes to Shechem and he has a plan so evidently he's he's grown up now uh i don't know for sure how old he is but he's he's a grown man and he has hatched a plan whereby he's going to be able to to gain control of at least this particular area

of israel so he goes uh to goes to his relatives and he speaks to his to his household and here's what he has to say he says to the leaders of shechem which is better for you that 70 men all the sons of Yerubbaal, all the sons of Gideon, which is better that 70 men rule over you or that one man rules over you? And not only that, he has a second argument. He says, also remember that I, unlike those 70 guys, I am your flesh and blood. That's kind of a twofold argument. Is it better that you have to be under the dominion of these 70 sons of Gideon, or would it be better if you are under one particular guy. And then secondly, remember, I'm your flesh and blood, but these sons of Gideon are not. They're basically strangers to you. So he first goes to his

household, to his mom's clan or family. And after he presumably convinces them, then they go to the leaders of Shechem and says, it says his mother's relatives spoke all these words on his behalf in the hearing of the leaders of Shechem. And it says they were, they were inclined to follow Abimelech because they said, well, you know, he is our, he is our relative. So that's kind of what the plan is so far. But of course there's a, there's a, there's a big, big problem. Abimelech can't simply go in and say to his 70 brothers you know what I'm gonna be king and not you first of all he's I mean he's not in the he's not an illegitimate son because concubines were I mean they were kind of part of this this particular culture and so even though they

were like a farther down on the family hierarchy if you will they weren't considered to be illegitimate children so he can't say that but he's certainly not considered to be a full authoritative son like the 70 sons of Gideon from his regular wives. So instead, what he decides to do is to take him out. He's going to completely take out the competition, but he's not going to do this by himself. It says that the people of the town gave him 70 pieces of silver from the house of Baal Berit, from the house of this Baal covenant god. And Abimelech used this money to hire worthless and reckless fellows, and they followed him. This is the greatest description of people ever. It is, it is, yeah. Actually, I prefer, I don't know what the other translations

have. Mine has worthless and reckless fellows. The Hebrew behind worthless is actually empty. it's the same word that was used to describe the the uh the pitchers earlier in the story where gideon puts you know the empty pitchers that the torches go inside there so these guys are reckless and empty it's just like nothing to them they're worthless worthless and reckless fellas it's just like this is just like mercenary type guys right i mean they'd nothing to lose not not not just a ton probably no families nothing to live for yeah yeah and the whole thing is insulting too. We don't know, of course, I'm sure that the market value of slaves varied a little bit during the course of time, but we're told back in Leviticus, for instance, that a male

slave was worth 50 shekels of silver. So these guys' lives are cheap because they're 70 brothers and they give him 70 shekels of silver to take out these 70 guys. So each one of them is considered the value 150th the value of of a male hebrew slave so it and i'd be like me uh giving somebody 10 bucks and say hey i want you to go murder that guy yeah so to me he's like he's worth nothing he's worth you know a couple of cups of coffee but anyway that's what that's what happens so they it's it's mercenary money but it's also religious money so the money comes from the temple Comes to the temple of Baal Baal Berit to do this

So Abimelech takes these Worthless and reckless fellows With their money, each one with a coin in his pocket And it says They went to his father's house at Ophrah And they killed his brothers The sons of Gideon Seventy men on one stone

But Jotham The youngest son of Yerubbaal Of Gideon was left because he hid himself and all the men of shechem and all bet millow assembled together and they went and made abimelech king by the oak of the pillar which was in shechem so they uh we don't know why they did it on one stone presumably because that was just like the spot of execution that they chose but with the exception of one the youngest jotham which we'll get to in a moment every single

one of gideon's sons were were assassinated so that's some uh some pretty brutal brutal plans and taking over uh taking over leadership of israel but that's what they did so we got to figure out what's going to happen next i mean anytime i like a detail is dropped like that like somebody survives you know that they're going to come up in the in the story in a minute And in fact, that's what we're going to find out next. So Abimelech, I mentioned, means my father's king. Jotham, who was the youngest son who escaped, who hid himself, his name, Yotam, means something like Yahweh is perfect.

So there's even a kind of a contrast between these two guys. So remember, they're half brothers. They're both the sons of Gideon, one by one of his wives, Yotham, and then one by this concubine, Abimelech. So half-brothers, but they represent very different perspectives on what should be transpiring in Israel. So they went and told this youngest son, Jotham, what had happened. And Jotham, he's quite a storyteller. He's got a good story that he's about to tell here.

It's actually classified as a fable. you know anytime you have like animals or or plants acting in in human sorts of ways then you have you have a fable i mean just think of right esop's fables right we have these a lot of animals acting and speaking in human sorts of ways so this is a classified as not necessarily a parable but but as a fable and that's what he's he's come up with by which to communicate the message he has to the people of Shechem it says he stood on the top of Mount Gerizim which is right there by Shechem probably because on the one hand he would be relatively safe there he'd be able to get away and also because there were natural acoustics we know from earlier stories

like a Deuteronomy 11 that when Israel entered the holy land they were kind of to divide up right and then they were by the the two mountains one of them being Gerizim and they were to pronounce back and forth the curses and the blessings of the covenant. So this was a perfect terrain for acoustics. So he's going to be able to be heard on Mount Gerizim as he speaks to the people of Shechem. He says he lifts his voice and calls out, and I'll read the whole thing so you can kind of get a feel for the way the story goes. He says, listen to me, O men of Shechem, that God may listen to you. Once the trees went forth to anoint a king over them, and they said to the olive tree, rain over us. But the olive tree said to them, shall I leave my fatness with which God

and men are honored and go to wave over the trees? Then the tree said to the fig tree, you come rain over us. But the fig tree said to them, shall I leave my sweetness and my good fruit and go to wave over the trees. And then the tree said to the vine, you come rain over us. But the vine said to them, shall I leave my new wine, which cheers God and men and go to wave over the trees? Finally, all the trees said to the bramble, you come rain over us. And the bramble said to the trees, if in truth you're anointing me as king over you come and take refuge in my shade but if not may fire come out from the bramble and consume the cedars of lebanon let me stop there because that's the end of the fable we'll see how

it's uh it's interpreted in just a minute that's a pretty cool story i mean did did he like kind of adapt an existing fable for this particular circumstance or the joth i've come up with this whole thing on his known who knows but it's a it works so well with the situation and we see this not just in the old testament but the new testament is all right stories are used constantly in order to communicate the truth in just a different fashion right it doesn't matter if it's the parable that Nathan told to David about the, the ewe lamb and the, and the visitor that came, or whether it's Isaiah who tells the parable of the vineyard that God planted in which he did everything possible for it to be fruitful and all it produced was stink fruit. Or if it's the

parables that the Jesus told, I mean, all of these are different ways, whether they're fable or parable or proverb or even uh apocalyptic literature all these are different ways of communicating the same truth and i mean it it works very well here you've got basically uh four different propositions the first three of which are rejected and the fourth is what he goes with so in it as as fables commonly are there's a lot of ludicrous stuff that's going on here right yeah because i mean the the trees are going to uh are going to like come underneath the bramble bush i mean it's a ludicrous image right how are they gonna how are they gonna find shade underneath nothing but a nothing but a thorn brush but you know the first

three he goes they go to the olive tree right and the olives like no why would i do that and they go to fig tree and get the same response and go to the vine and get the same response so the olive and the fig and the vine and these are like the these are these are representative of the three great crops that are produced in the holy land i mean you've got uh you've got figs which are used as fruit and sweetener you've got olives olive oil was which used for everything i mean everything from like uh softening leather to anointing to laxatives to cooking with i mean all sorts of things is what olive oil was used for so it's very it's a very beneficial production of of nature same with the fig and of course the vine is used to to make wine so all

three of these have their place their purpose and it's a very good and a very fruitful purpose now you get to the bramble what's what you know what's the bramble good for i guess gideon used that's what i was about to say gideon knows how to use bramble right but uh yeah it's just it's just a thorn bush you know there's no shade so when they come to the bramble having exhausted all the other possibilities and say you reign over us and the bramble's like okay yeah yeah if you want me to reign over you want me to be a king you are underneath me to begin with and if you double cross me then fire is going to come out and and consume you so that's that's the fable that's the story and we have to assume that this particular parable or fable was understood

by the people to whom he was to whom he was speaking but just in case he's about to having told the story, he's going to give its interpretation. And that begins with verse 16. So this is still Jotham speaking. Now, therefore, if you have dealt in truth and integrity in making Abimelech king, and if you have dealt well with Yerubal and his house, and have dealt well and have dealt with him as he deserved, it's kind of a long convoluted sentence. It's almost like he breaks off mid through it's like it's like he he was gonna finish saying something else but there's this big break in between so if you've dealt like with sincerity and abimelech and if you've dealt well with my father and treated him and his progeny as they deserved now we'll pick

up the if then part of this in a minute because he goes on to say for my father he fought for you he risked his life and delivered you from the hand of Midian. But you have risen against my father's house today and killed his son, 70 men on one stone, and made Abimelech the son of a slave girl, king over the men of Shechem, because he is your relative. So we have this big pause in the middle of this pronouncement, this interpretation of Jotham. So picking up then, if you've dealt well, verse 19, if then you've dealt in truth and integrity with Yerubbaal and his house to stay, rejoice in Abimelech and let him also rejoice in you. So in other words, if you think that you've done the right thing, if you've acted in sincerity and truth and everything

that you've done, then okay. But if not, and of course they haven't, but if not, let fire come out from Abimelech and consume the men of Shechem and Betmilo and let fire come out from the men of Shechem and from Betmilo and consume Abimelech so that is uh that's his interpretation that's his uh that's his application of this particular parable so the men of Shechem have have to uh to put it in an understatement have chosen poorly they've chosen someone who's is the equivalent in the fable of a of the bramble of the one who is worthless to the one who's actually going to work much more harm than it could ever ever work good and he's prophesied right that uh what's going to happen here is mutual destruction it's not going to be just the men of shechem who

suffer but it's also going to be abimelech who who suffers i think it's shocking that he survives this yeah it is i mean he he must have i'm thinking i was trying to envision this i'm thinking he probably and he had a skate plan you know he he knew the terrain and uh he put himself where he could be heard but where he could get away real quick but it's still amazing like they just listen to him right it's gonna take two or three minutes to say all of this and in those two or three minutes a lot could happen he must have had him spellbound that's probably what happened so like sorry we get we gotta know what's going on here right yeah because i mean as soon as he gets done dropping this knowledge on them and he immediately just runs away and he has to he has to

hide yeah he uh it says he escaped and fled went to some place called beer which just means uh bear means a well so maybe it was just a well uh where he hid out for a while or maybe it was actually a place called uh bear but anyway probably lived in a well probably did yeah lived in a hole in the ground uh understandably right i mean if you just if you've lost uh all your brothers and you know that this half brother is out for your for your neck then yeah you're going to remain in hiding so he says he stayed there because of him like his his brother so Things are not looking good for the descendants of Gideon in more than one way. But this pronounce of Jotham, it is a fable, but it's also a prophecy, more or less.

Prophetic statements take all sorts of different forms. Sometimes they're just acted out statements, prophecies, prophecies, like when Jeremiah walks around carrying the iron yoke to symbolize what's going to happen to them under the Babylonians, and when Isaiah walks around naked for a long time as a prophetic enactment of Israel being stripped down and forced into exile. So those are prophecies too. So this fable is a prophecy, a warning of what is to come. All right, so what's going to happen here with abimelech and in case anyone is uncertain about this uh let me put this out there before i forget abimelech is not considered to be one of the judges and if you go through the book

of judges and you add them all up abimelech is excluded from this list because he's obviously is not one that was called by god or clothed with his spirit in order to bring about the rescue of israel quite the opposite he was like an anti-judge yeah he's he's the almost the exact opposite of a judge yeah yeah because he well he acts unjustly right and he brings about instead of deliverance he actually brings about uh bloodshed and assassination and so he's kind of the uh the anti-deliverer of the the book of judges the anti-christ if you will in the sense that these other guys were christened they were anointed well he's the anti-anointed one well his rule over Israel was relatively

short-lived. It says he ruled over Israel for three years and God stepped in. It says he sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the men of Shechem and the men of Shechem dealt treacherously with Abimelech.

I don't know that that particular phrase is used elsewhere in the book of Judges. We do have examples of God sending well this could be translated evil spirit or maybe just a spirit who was enacting like a god-ordained evil it it's hard to tell but whatever it was there's a there's going to be some uh distrust and backstabbing that happens between these two these two parties yeah and you might and you might not have to take this

quite so literally as as an evil spirit i mean sometimes you know you'll say well there's just like a a spirit of disunity here and we don't necessarily when we say something like that we don't necessarily mean that there is an entity involved here that we're saying that between two parties there is there is bad faith has sprung up right this this this sort of thing that there's disunity there's distrust there's uh bad faith all all of this kind of stuff so i mean you can you we all know what this looks like yeah we've all seen we've all seen this with it within relationships and stuff before where things break down uh and you're like man there's just like a bad vibe in that in that relationship bad blood yeah i mean we yeah we use all these metaphorically

so we know what we're talking about well and so this this plays out it says that this was all done verse 24 in order that the violence done to the 70 sons of gideon might come and their blood be laid on abimelech their brother who killed them and on the men of shechem who strengthened his hand to kill his brother so all of this is god's way of if if abimelech was the anti-judge then god is stepping in to be the true judge he's going to pronounce the sentence not just to bottom abimelech for his assassination of his brothers but also upon the men of shechem for strengthening his hands which is a in old testament idiomatic phrase meaning basically to help someone to assist them in some way so what they do well it says the men of shechem they they set men in ambush

against him, against Abimelech, on the tops of the mountains. They robbed all who might pass by, by them on the road. So they had these highway robberies basically taking place during Abimelech's reign. And then we have another character that's going to end the story, whose name is Gaal,

who was presumably a native of Shechem. Gaal's son of Ebed. So he comes to his relatives. He goes into Shechem. And the men of Shechem, it says, put their trust in him. So we have now someone else coming in trying to take control away from Abimelech. So there's going to be kind of a coup attempted here.

So they went out into the fields, they gathered the grapes, the harvest, and they pressed the grapes. They held this festival and they went into the house of their God and they ate and they drank and they cursed Abimelech. so all these guys are getting drunk and they're going back home and they're having this party slash worship kind of service which was not uncommon in the ancient world because it's all happening in the temple of the god and in the midst of all this they're cursing bemelech and gaal takes this opportunity he says who is a bemelech and who is shechem that we should serve him? Is he not the son of Yerubbaal? And is Zabul not his lieutenant? Serve the men of Hamor, the father of Shechem, but why should we serve him? Were therefore that these people were under

my authority, then I would remove Abimelech. And he said to Abimelech, increase your army and come out. So it's more or less a setup where Gaal is going to try and take over. Abimelech's been king for three years, but Gaal thinks that he can sway the hearts of the people and turn them against Abimelech so that they put him in charge instead. I mean, this is all part of this kind of growing tension, all part of the outworkings of God putting this evil spirit between them, where you have differing part differing factions all struggling for power you got gaal you got a bimelech you got their rulers and you got the people to check them and it's all basically going into as the story goes from here it's all going to to crumble around them as nobody trusts anybody

else everybody's looking out for number one and we'll have to finish up the story next week but this is going to be the the the fruit of everything that they've done abimelech starts out in blood and he's going to end up he's going to he starts out shedding blood and he's going to end up with his own with his own bloodshed and not a lot of good guys in this story no they're not not not a lot of good guys and judges period right i mean they have like little brief glimpses of of good on occasion but in this particular story besides jotham besides the youngest son of gideon now everybody comes out of this uh not looking good but uh looking like yeah they're just it's out basically for for power and for bloodshed yeah the argument is not uh we have turned away from

the lord we need to overthrow this guy and turn our hearts back and repent and this is not the argument that is being made no no like everything is everything is horizontal right there's no concern for god i mean the only way god is used is use his house for drinking and for boasting and and for backstabbing. That's about the only way that a god figures into this particular story. Yeah. Well, that is it, guys. That is 40 minutes.

We will be back next week with Abimelech's fate. We'll see how this all pans out. If you would like to support the podcast, if it's been helpful to you, you can do so by going over to 1517.org, go to the Donate page. You can become a contributor. Thank you so much to those of you who do that. You make it all possible. Chad, I will see you next week.

See you then. We'll see you next time.