Learning to see true reality (Judg 9:7-15)

I often wonder why certain things hold such an attraction for people that they cannot dispense with them. For each person who clings to activities or things, there will be another who feels no pull towards them. Thus, for some, alcohol gives them a glow and helps them relax with friends, for others it makes them dizzy and tired. There are people who delight in advanced technical gadgets, computer games, beautiful houses, clothes, or pretty jewellery. What is the allure of these things for us? I suspect that some appeal and others do not based partly on the associations they carry, the things they promise if we owned them, the value we see in having them. Ads play on these yearnings: buy this car and you will be irresistibly attractive to women, wear this perfume and drive men crazy with desire. Silly as these may sound, the principle works on us nevertheless – we just fill the blanks of ‘have/do this… and you will have/be…’ with something specific to our longings.

Reading Abimelech’s offer of kingship (Judg 9:1-3) makes me wonder why Shechem even considered his proposal? What was the attraction of having him as ruler? Presumably, they had hoped for stability and protection from other usurpers (the seventy sons of Gideon) and benevolence as from someone who was their kin and would therefore have their interests at heart. Yet the one other surviving son of Gideon, Jotham, reveals through his parable how wrong their perception was. They have chosen a bramble (commentators think this is most likely buckthorn) as their king (Judg 9:14). It was common in the ancient Near East (as well as in Israel) to compare a king to a tree that provides shade (i.e. protection; e.g. Lam 4:20; Isa 30:2). How degrading for the noble cedars of Lebanon (Judg 9:15; standing for the leadership of Shechem) to look to a bramble for shade! Indeed, the bramble arrogantly assures them of it (v.15), but anyone who knows reality will scoff at such a promise. Indeed, who would want to stand close to a thornbush when it might prick one? Worse still, the bramble is likely quite dry and can easily catch fire. Thus, Abimelech is portrayed here as not only good for nothing but potentially destructive.

While the parable focuses on the choice of Abimelech as inadequate rather than on the theological perspective that Israel should not have a human king at all (Judg 8:23), it nevertheless gives a scornful estimate of human rule in general. The trees approach first the most valued plants of Israel to rule over them: the olive tree whose oil was indispensable to life (used in cooking, as medicine, in cosmetics, sacrifices, etc.), the fig tree whose sweet and juicy fruit was prized, and the vine whose wine embodied celebration and festivals (Judg 9:8-13). Compared to the useful tasks they performed, kingship is described as merely waving over the other trees, useless activity and perhaps an ostentatious one that merely parades over others. Thus, Shechem has made two mistakes in accepting Abimelech as king. First, they did not perceive his true nature (a good-for-nothing bramble who, in reality, had little to offer but threatened to destroy those who submitted to him). Secondly, they misunderstood the very nature of human kingship endowing it with the kind of qualities (protection) that, in reality, only God can give.

Scripture highlights for us how we so often look for the fulfilment of our yearnings in the wrong place. We endow material things and human activities with the kind of value that only God can give and do not see that we have only got hold of brambles that will hurt and destroy us. If only we could recognise that they are worthless, we would not care for them, but so often we are blinded by our own desires and the false promises of such ‘brambles’. Only God’s truth can open our eyes to reality and help ‘the things of this world’ (1 John 2:15-17) to lose their hold on us. That is why reading Scripture and aligning our thinking with the Lord’s is so crucial.

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