When Ambition Has No Moral Compass - Judges 9:1-57 (Session 10)

Judges 9 introduces Abimelech, one of Gideon’s sons, and records one of the darkest chapters yet in Israel’s spiritual decline. Unlike the judges whom God raised up as deliverers, Abimelech seeks power for himself. With money taken from the temple of Baal-Berith, he hires reckless men and murders his brothers so that he can become king.

In this session, Glenn and Steve examine what happens when ambition and power operate without a moral compass. Israel was supposed to be different from the nations around them, yet the people of Shechem willingly support a violent man because he is one of their relatives and promises the kind of leadership they desire.

The only surviving brother, Jotham, responds with the parable of the trees. Valuable trees refuse to abandon their useful work in order to rule, but eventually the worthless bramble accepts the position. The warning is clear: the people have chosen a ruler who provides no real protection and will ultimately bring destruction.

The chapter then descends into betrayal, crime, civil war, and violence. Abimelech and the people who empowered him eventually turn against one another. Judges 9 also raises the difficult question of God sending an evil spirit between Abimelech and Shechem. The discussion considers this statement in its larger context of divine judgment on people already committed to violence and idolatry.

Abimelech eventually dies after a woman drops a millstone on his head. Even in his final moments, he appears more concerned about his reputation than about getting right with God.

Judges 9 reminds us that sin may appear to go unpunished for a time, but God is not mocked. It also warns us to be careful whom we trust, whom we follow, and what ultimately serves as the anchor of our lives.

Scripture: Judges 9
Series: The Book of Judges — An RTTB Study

Questions discussed in this session:

• What happens when we hire relatives?
• What would cause tribes of Israel to fight each other?
• Should churches try to be like the world? 
• What happens when we make worthless people our leaders? 

Transcript

Rebellion in Judges

Speaker 1 0:21

Here we are reasoning through the Bible and I hope you've been following along with us through the book of Judges as we sludge our way through some muck in the book of Judges . It's kind of a horrible book with a lot of disobedience of Israel , and we're in chapter 9 . Well , here in chapter 9 , we meet a man named Abimelech and we're going to learn about him . Up to this point in the book we've seen several deliverers that God has lifted up . Israel is in total rebellion against the true God . They've abandoned the true God for false gods and God periodically raises up a deliverer , drives out the enemies , and then there's a time of peace and during the time of peace they forget God and go back to worshiping the idols again . God then removes his protection from them and the cycle all starts all over . The lesson , as we've said all along , is it's a lesson for us , because we need to always remember the good things that God's done for us and not fall into the trap and the snares of the world and false idols . When we do , god removes his protection from us and we end up with attacks from the enemy until we repent and get back to the true God again . Here in chapter 9 , we meet this man , abimelech , and one of the problems we have here is that we find out Abimelech was Gideon's son .

Speaker 1 1:48

Gideon had 70 sons . He had multiple wives and concubines , which is one of the problems . Now I have enough trouble with one wife , thank you very much , without having multiple ones . Just a quick note about that . Yes , in the Old Testament there were several people that had multiple wives . Every time when there's somebody with multiple wives , it always creates a problem . Every single time Solomon brought in multiple wives , they ended up bringing in idol worship and helping to split the nation . Back in Genesis , people had multiple wives . Every single time it creates problems , even on a practical sense . I remember a pastor of mine that had been a missionary in an African country . He taught in a school with the children of the king . The king had multiple wives and he would talk to these children and they would tell you my mother is not the favorite . It's always the case that problems happen with multiple wives every single time . So polygamy is not a good thing . It's a sign of decay in a society , and that's what we see here in Judges .

Speaker 1 3:01

Gideon had multiple wives and we're going to find out what happens to the children when this happens . So we're going to pick up chapter 9 , verse 3 , and I'll just read there . And his mother's relatives spoke all these words on the behalf in the hearing of all the leaders of Shechem and they were inclined to follow Abimelech , for they said he is our relative . They gave him 70 pieces of silver from the house of Baal-Berith with which Abimelech hired worthless and reckless fellows and they followed him and he went to his father's house at Ophrah and killed his brothers , the sons of Jerubal , 70 men on one stone . But Jotham , the youngest son of Jerubal , was left for he hid himself . All the men of Shechem and Bereth , milo assembled together and they went and made Abimelech king by the oak on the pillar which was in Shechem . Here we have Abimelech , the people around him hay him and hire him to be king and his first act is to go hire useless and worthless people and kill all his brothers on one stone .

Speaker 2 4:04

Just to mention that the name of Abimelech itself means son of the king . So it's curious . In our previous session we talked about Gideon and how he refused to be king , but yet he fell in the trappings of being a king of royalty . And here he is , one of his sons that he is named actually son of the king .

Speaker 1 4:22

And what's interesting here is this takes place at a place called Shechem . Now Shechem we mentioned back in Joshua . Shechem was a very important location . A lot of good things happened at Shechem . The Abrahamic covenant was made at Shechem . This was where Abraham's sons and grandsons went through and came back to the Lord there . Joshua , at the end of Joshua , brought the people there and made them promise to follow God . And here they are in the same location , shechem , and they're as far away from God as can be .

Speaker 2 4:59

And Shechem is in between the two mounts , the Hebaal and Ghezim , where they had the blessings and the cursings whenever Joshua also brought them back into that land that he was told to do after the initial conquest of Jericho and AI . But for right now it's under Canaanite control , and that's where we are with this time of history Canaanite control .

Speaker 1 5:24

but these chapters here mainly deal with Israel and their disobedience . We're about to see a civil war amongst the people of Israel . They're doing a good enough job at sending all by themselves , without the Canaanites having to help them along . So in verse 4 , they gave him 70 pieces of silver from the house of this Baal God , Baal Barith . That tells us when it says the house of Baral Barith , there's a temple there . There was a place of worship , some sort of a shrine or a temple to this pagan god at Shechem and the people are also giving money .

Speaker 2 6:03

Obviously that's where they're getting the money from . So the people are going in and worshiping Baal , giving sacrifices and also money .

Speaker 1 6:11

The irony here and maybe it's not even irony , but it's interesting that the money that was given to this false idol , this false God , was used for murder . The money that was given in worship to this God , this Baal God , was taken out of the treasury of the pagan temple and given to a man who hired worthless people to kill his brothers . That's how far Israel has sunk in . It's a terrible , awful thing and just one problem after another in this book of Judges on what happens when people forget the true God . He hired reckless fellows . Now this abymalact . Is it okay to hire relatives in general ? In our day , people do it periodically In church service .

Speaker 1 7:03

Is it good to hire relatives to do Christian service work ? I submit it can be , but I think we need to be careful . There's some cultures that always hire relatives and I think sometimes the relatives are youthless and worthless people and sometimes we need to look more at who's the best person for the job and not who's my friend , because nepotism is a problem , has been a problem , will be a problem . We really need to be when we're doing the Lord's work , not only hire my friend , my buddy , my relative . Hire the best person to do the job . In verse 4, . Abymalact hired worthless people who were scum and scoundrels . What do you think happened when he starts using these lawless and unruly people ? What's going to happen down the road before I even get too far into this chapter ?

Speaker 2 7:52

Well , if there are obviously people that are for hire , if they have somebody else that's going to pay them , they're going to go to them . Their loyalty is not to the person , their loyalty is to the money that they're receiving their mercenaries .

Speaker 1 8:04

In verse 5, . Abymalact killed 70 of his brothers on one stone . Imagine how awful that would be . Ambition and power without a moral compass will turn people into monsters . This guy , abymalact , had ambition and now he's got power , but he doesn't have a moral compass . He doesn't have anything that rules his life . He doesn't have a principle larger than he is to guide his actions . He's doing what the last verse in the book says whatever was good in his own eyes and the book of Judges

Worldly Influence on Churches

Speaker 1 8:39

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Speaker 2 8:39

this is about God raising up the deliverers , and here we're taking a little bit of a side story of abymalact becoming himself a king or offering himself as a king to rule over the people . As we noted before , the people are already starting to shy towards this , wanting to have a king like the other nations . That's why they went to Gideon and said hey , be our king . Not only you , but you're offspring , your son and your son son . We're seeing the people wanting to tend to shade this way towards . We want to be like the other nations . We want to king ourselves . They're even now at the point where they're supporting this person who's volunteering to rule over them , but the way he gets there is through murdering his own relatives , half brothers and such and they were supposed to be different .

Speaker 1 9:30

They were supposed to be set apart . They were supposed to be an unusual people . They were supposed to be dedicated to God as an example to the other nations , but they wanted to be like them , and I think that tendency infects our churches . We want to be like the people around us . We don't want people to think well , they're just unusual . I think that's not a good thing . We don't necessarily want to be looked at as oddballs , but we do want to be different . We don't want to be like the worldly people around us .

Speaker 2 10:00

Yeah , I think in general in our churches we need to be aware and be careful of how much of the world we let into our churches .

Speaker 1 10:10

The world has a habit of , no matter how thick you make the door to the church , it tends to creep under the door , or we carry it inside the church in our pocket or something , because it tends to work its way into the church . We have this horrible slaughter of a bimilech and his brothers because he's ambitious . Ambition can be a good thing if it's directed by biblical principles . There's nothing wrong with an ambitious person as long as it's guided by biblical principles . But ambition and power without a moral compass will turn people into monsters . Look at all the people throughout history that have had ambition and power without a moral compass and it always turns into a terrible thing . They make them like their king . Did they ask for God's guidance in this ? Did the leaders of Shechem do anything good or protest the killings or hold anyone accountable ? There's nothing in here that says they challenged this guy .

Speaker 2 11:06

No , they're complicit with it . You get the idea that they're complicit with it .

Speaker 1 11:09

So , but there was one . There was a man named Jotham who , from verses seven through 21 , he had hidden . He was the last of the brothers . He hid himself . He didn't get slaughtered . What he basically does ? He gives this long speech , he stands up in the top of Mount Gerizim , which , again , shechem was near this mountain . So he stands up on this mountain where everybody can hear him , and he gives this little story and at the end of the story he leaves town and hides because he didn't want to get killed either . Basically , the story . If you don't understand a little bit about trees , it doesn't make sense . But the it's a parable . The parable the cedars of Lebanon were these huge , majestic , strong trees .

Speaker 2 11:54

It's what they took to use to build the temple . Those trees were often used to build structures .

Speaker 1 11:59

So trees were valuable , they were majestic , they're large .

Choosing a Worthless King's Consequences

Speaker 1 12:04

In his little parable , the trees are looking for a king . So they go through a series of other trees asking them to be king . And they start with lesser tree and then go to a lesser tree , then go to a lesser tree , they go to the olive tree . The olive tree says no . Well , then they go to the fig tree , which is a lesser tree , and then they go to a grapevine . Each of these say no and they end up in his parable with the bramble . Now , bramble is not a fruit tree , it's just not even a tree . It's negative value . It's in the way and has storms and stickers and it's really a nuisance .

Speaker 2 12:40

And it's low line . You don't get shade from a bramble . It's a low line plant .

Speaker 1 12:45

So there is no shade in a bramble . That's part of his parable . So he's seeing here that these majestic trees wanted a king and they go down to this lowly negative value bramble and make him the king . That's basically obviously what's happened here . With a bimolec , they've taken a worthless person and made him king . A negative value person that's not going to be a good ruler . He slaughters all his brothers , so he declares this curse over a bimolec .

Speaker 2 13:17

Yeah , he says there in verse 16 . He says now , therefore , if you have dealt with truth and integrity , making a bimolec king , and if you have dealt well with Jeruboel and his house that's Gideon and have dealt with him as he deserved for my father fought for you and risked his life and delivered you from the hands of the Median , but if you have risen against my father's house today and have killed his sons 70 men on the stones and have made a bimolec the son of his mates and were king over the men of Shechem because of your relative , if then if you have dealt in truth and integrity and Jeruboel in his house this day , rejoice in a bimolec and let him also rejoice in you . But if not , let fire come out from a bimolec and consume the men of Shechem and Bethma'el-Milo , and let fire come from the man of Shechem , from both Bethma'el , and consume a bimolec .

Speaker 1 14:11

We're in a bad spot here . At least Israel is in a bad spot . They've hired a king when they didn't ask for God's guidance . He's a worthless king that surrounded himself with worthless people and committed murder , and everybody was complicitant . So Judges 9 , verse 22 says this Now a bimolec ruled over Israel three years . Then God sent an evil spirit between a bimolec and the men of Shechem , and the men of Shechem dealt treacherously with a bimolec so that the violence done to the 70 sons of Jeruboel might come and their blood might be laid on a bimolec , their brother who killed them , and on the men of Shechem who strengthened his hands to kill his brothers .

Speaker 1 14:52

So we have a very interesting question here that is arisen , verse 23, . God sent an evil spirit between these people . On the surface of it , is not God a good God ? How can God send evil spirits ? What's the deal here ? It's a legitimate question , but I think if we just unpack what's going on here and again , what you can't do is just open your Bible down to one verse and read one sentence and then have an issue with it . You have to always ask what's going on in the context and what's going on in the chapter in the book and where are we ? And things like that .

Speaker 1 15:29

So , as we've said all along , there's a lot of disobedience , worshiping pagan idols and a lot of evil here . Here we have , as we've just described . This man of bimolec has just committed murder of his brothers , and the men of Shechem hired him for this , watched him commit this murder and didn't do anything about it , and they paid him with money from an idol worship that they had , these horrible , evil idols that did horrible evil things . Both of bimolec and the men of Shechem were both guilty . They were both , as we would call criminals , because they had both committed crimes . They had both , before the true God , done evil things and they both deserved punishment . I think what's going on here is that , yes , god allowed an evil spirit , allowed a demon , to come in and cause friction , division between these two people to where they kill each other .

Speaker 2 16:30

So it's clear that a bimolec is out . God's made the decision . Abimelech needs to be taken care of . You're numbers up , yeah , yeah .

Speaker 1 16:37

And he does this by letting abimelech fight with the people of Shechem , since they're both guilty . God's going to punish them by letting this evil spirit cause division between them . This really is a low spot , but we can't blame God here . Again , if we just look at it logically , what were God's options ? He either has to prevent the evil in the first place , which takes away human freedom and turns us into robots that can't really love , can't really decide for ourselves , and we're basically a robot or a computer program that's doing what God wants us to do , rather than having the dignity of being an autonomous human that can have free will . Or he allows evil to happen and doesn't punish it , which people criticize . Why has God allowed evil ? Or here we have two evil people and he lets them destroy each other and he deals with the evil . Now it's an ugly way , but what is God going to do ?

Speaker 2 17:35

Sometimes that you ask questions . Does that ever happen ? Would that ever happen to us today ? Would God ever send an evil spirit in today's world ?

Speaker 1 17:46

Our culture is very divided . We're consuming ourselves and we're doing a lot of foolish things in our culture . It very well could be that the reason we do is because God's removed his power , and when God removes his power and his hedge of protection , then we either destroy ourselves or an evil spirit comes along to help us .

Speaker 2 18:05

And what's the greater context ? Has God left , forsaken or have the people forsake ? So again , look at the context , as you point out , as far as what's going on , and not just focus in that , in this case , god sent an evil spirit . Why did that occur ? Which is what you went through .

Speaker 1 18:24

The rest of chapter nine is these evil people dealing with each other in devious ways . It just gets worse and worse . Look at 925 . The men of Shechem set men in ambush against him on the tops of the mountains and they robbed all who might pass by along the road . And it was told to a bimolek . So these men of Shechem , they were inspired to fight against this guy , a bimolek . They set men on this roadway to ambush a bimolek when he came by . So get the picture they're waiting to ambush this guy so they can kill him . And while they're waiting they decide , hey , as long as we're waiting , we might as well rob some people while we're here . So again , it's just they've lost their moral compass . Here they're supposed to be getting rid of this murderer , a bimolek , and while they're waiting to do that , they themselves are stealing from people and robbing people .

Speaker 2 19:26

They're highwaymen , they just rob people as they go along their business , and it harkens back to the parable of the trees looking for another tree to rule over them and protect them . Well , we see here that a bimolek , he's the bramble , he's not able to protect the people at all . This is what they reverted to .

Speaker 1 19:43

Is this type of criminal activity so if we remember back to the first chapter in the book of Judges , it starts off with them asking the Lord what to do and then it slowly gets into a deviation , to where they've introduced some deviations from following the Lord . And that slight deviation way back in chapter one now has turned into full-blown disobedience fighting against their brother , stealing against innocent people , murdering people and not doing anything about it . God gets in a position where he has to deal with them .

Speaker 2 20:16

But there's a new character that comes in that the people put their trust in , and that's in verse 26 . It says Now all the son of Ebed came with his relatives and crossed over into Shechem , and the men of Shechem put their trust in him . So here again we have the people that are beginning to shift their focus , and what we talked about , the loyalties and things , were in regards to what they had purchased , what they had gone with . They hadn't asked God about it . Situations , not the way they were . New person comes in and they decide , oh , we're going to now put our trust in a new person . We don't see God in any of this or their trust in God . They're putting their trust in individual people .

Speaker 1 20:57

The people here shouldn't be surprised at what's going on . When you hire worthless and deceitful people , what are you going to get ? You're going to get deceit , and a Bemelech shouldn't be surprised that they're out for them . My mother used to say if you lie down with dogs , you get up with fleas . Surprisingly , that's really what happens , because the people here they hang around with worthless people . They hire worthless people . They don't follow the true God , so they end up with problems . Verse 27 , the men of Shechem says here . They went out into the field and gathered grapes in their vineyards and trod them and held a festival . And they went into the house of their God and ate and drank and cursed a Bemelech . Here they are . They still have these pagan idols , these pagan gods , in their midst . Now they're having what's probably a drunken festival and cursing a Bemelech .

Speaker 2 21:49

But it's their God . It's not God Yahweh .

Speaker 1 21:53

We're not going to go through every verse of this . It just gets horrible and horrible that they fight against each other . Look down at verse 45 . And in verse 45 , it says A Bemelech fought against the city all that day and he captured the city and killed the people who were in it . Then he raised the city and sowed it with salt . A Bemelech now comes in , fights against them and wipes this out .

Speaker 1 22:15

Look at verse 49 , the bimilech burned a thousand people to death . In verse 49 . The people also cut down each one of his branch and followed a bimilech and put him on their inner chamber and set the inner chamber on fire and those inside and all the men of the tower of Shechem also died about a thousand men and women . Civil war going on here . These are all people of Israel that are brothers with each other . Now it's not even just the enemy coming in , the pagans from the outside . Now they're fighting with each other and killing each other . We have chaos and civil war going on . Verse 53 , a woman ends up dropping a large stone on a bimilech's head .

Speaker 2 22:58

Yeah , a millstone .

Speaker 1 23:00

A millstone and in the next verse he asked one of his men to finish him off with a sword so that it would not be said that a woman killed him . What I take out of this is in a bimilech's dying breath , he was more concerned with his pride than he was his soul . He knew he was dying and he was more concerned with his pride about not being killed by a woman than he was about getting right with the true God . Even on his deathbed he didn't get right with God and a lot of people today think , oh , I'll get right with God someday , or I've got a long time to live and I'm gonna put it out of my mind . So I submit to you , if people don't get right with God today , they won't get right with God on their deathbed .

Speaker 2 23:43

Today is the day of salvation .

Speaker 1 23:45

I mean . Sure , there are a few deathbed conversions , but more often than not , people that are gonna convert and follow Christ do so today . They don't wait till their deathbed because people faced with death are gonna do the same thing that they do when they're faced with life . This guy , bimilech , is just an example . His dying breath , he was more prideful than he was , trying to realize that he's about to meet his maker .

Speaker 2 24:08

If you're putting off following Christ and salvation , it really shows that you're more tied to the world . You don't wanna let go of the world and you want to delay that as long as possible . We never know what's gonna happen . We never know how it's gonna be handled . I think at the end , in the last two verses , it says thus God repaid the wickedness of a Bimilech which he had done to his father and killing his 70 brothers . And then , in 57 also , god returned all the wickedness of the men of Shechem on their heads in the curse of Yothem , the son of Jeroboar . All came upon them . As we pointed out , this is God taking care of the situation .

Speaker 1 24:49

Now remember it said that he ruled Israel for three years , he killed all these people and then he was king for about three years . But here the verses you just read he gets what's doing . So I would imagine during those three years he would say oh , I've got away with it , I'm the one in power here , I'm the king . He probably lived a good life for those three years , didn't think too much about it . But God is not mocked . The sin that we do will be dealt with . We do things that are a crime against God , we do things that are sinful against other people and we think we get away with it because God's not dealing with it today , but he will deal with it .

Speaker 1 25:32

I remember in Daniel , daniel interpreted the dream of the king and said king , god's sending you a message that you're gonna be taught a lesson here . And it was a whole year in between the time of that dream and when he was actually driven insane . We think we get away with these things , but we don't . The verses you just read God repaid the wickedness of Abimelech . He didn't get away with it and we won't get away with it , and so what we really need to do is , as it says in many places I think it's first . Peter says fall in our face before God , and he will lift us up .

The Importance of Anchoring to God

Speaker 2 26:07

We also see back earlier on God's argument for the people to follow him . He uses the same argument that Abimelech used hey , is it better for the son of your Yerubal to rule you , or is it better for me , one of your kind , to rule you too ? So he's using the same argument and we see the people shift their focus and trust , like we mentioned before , over to now God . A lesson out of that is that the people are gonna shift If your anchor is not God and you're not worshiping God and you're not following God . God is always steady , god is always there and he's not gonna shift with the winds . But if you're going with the people around you and you're popular with the people , that popularity is gonna wane at some point and it's gonna shift to somebody else . So be careful who you anchor to or what you anchor to .

Speaker 1 27:02

I think of all these Hollywood types . They're really really popular one year and the next year they're last year's news . It's a good thing that God is stable . Probably a good place here to pause in our study of judges and we'll pick up next time in chapter 10 and we're gonna meet a man who does some very foolish things , but we've seen that all along here in Judges . We'll be picking up next time on reasoning through the Bible . Here we go .