One of Gideon’s (nicknamed Jerubbaal) son’s, Abimelech, conspires with his mother’s family to rule over “you”. It sounds like Abilmelech is using Gideon’s legacy to become king of the city (Shechem) or of all Israel. They agree, give him money, and he leads an army of hired to thugs to go back to his 69 brothers and kill them all. I assume that this means that all of these brothers were half-brothers.
Woah. Note to self – polygamy is really, really bad and leads to all kinds of infighting and fractured family dynamics. This even happened to an otherwise unblemished Biblical hero, Gideon.
The youngest son of Gideon, Jotham, survives the massacre. Meanwhile, Abimelech is made king. Jotham gives a curse/speech to the people about this before running off and hiding.
The rest of the chapter covers a mini-civil war in which Abimelech thinks the people of Shechem are revolting against him as ruler. So, he massacres the city. He attacks another neighboring city, but is mortally wounded by a millstone being thrown from a tower and asks his servant to kill him before he dies of the millstone wound. The chapter concludes by saying that the these events were the fulfillment of Jotham’s curse. It also states that the men of Israel departed afterwards. This indicates to me that Abimelech was indeed to trying to become king of all Israel and hijack Gideon’s legacy.
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