Who claims our allegiance? (Judg 9:1-6)

After WWII a man whose family was known to my father opened a bank in Hungary. The man convinced his siblings of the scheme, and they encouraged their relatives and friends in good faith to put their money in his bank. However, the man turned out to be a scoundrel. Shortly after amassing enough funds, he made off with the money and immigrated to the US with his wife and child. People saw all their savings disappear, others faced financial ruin, and one man committed suicide in his desperation. It was a terrible case of trust abused for personal advantage. Sometimes if someone is family or has the same background and shares our convictions about life, politics or faith, these can blind us to their shadow side. Conversely, we may be suspicious of others who are deemed ‘outsiders’ because they come from a different culture, background or go to a different church. Often we navigate these tricky waters by sticking to our own kind and giving them our loyalty.

It seems that in Israel during the judges’ period trust and allegiance was a live question and loyalty to family, clan, and tribe often trumped all other considerations. However, they also had a rival claim for their allegiance in God’s covenant that bound them together with Him and each other as a people. That this overarching loyalty irrespective of tribe was an issue in Israel is clear from the narrator’s concluding remark of the Gideon story. Israel has forgotten their God and showed no covenant loyalty (NASB ‘kindness’, Hebrew ḥesed; Judg 8:34-35) to Gideon, His instrument of deliverance. Ephraim, in whose territory Shechem was, has already shown earlier a quarrelsome attitude towards an outsider, Gideon (from the tribe of Manasseh), that was only assuaged by the latter praising their achievement higher than his own (Judg 8:1-3). No wonder that Abimelech’s stress on kinship as qualification for becoming king appealed to them (Judg 9:1-3).[1]

Abimelech, the only son of Gideon’s by a concubine or second-class wife (Judg 8:31), must have felt inferior in his father’s household. The designation ‘in’ rather than ‘from’ Shechem suggests that his mother remained there, and Gideon visited her from time-to-time; not an uncommon practice in pagan Canaan. Abimelech would have grown up with his maternal relations, which may explain his allegiance (such as it was) to them. Yet, he is also cynically manipulative setting up the choice between himself and seventy ‘outsiders’. For one thing, Gideon refused kingship (Judg 8:23) so there is no reason to assume that anyone would want to rule over Shechem, for another, it is absurd to suggest the simultaneous reign of seventy men (Judg 9:2). Abimelech is playing on Shechem’s fear of coming under an outsider’s power. The significance of slaughtering the seventy ‘on one stone’ is uncertain, but it possibly indicates cold-blooded butchery of each brother, one after the other, rather than killing them in the heat of a surprise attack (Judg 9:4-5).[2]

While it is hard for us to relate to such a gruesome story, the crux of the matter is the question of loyalties. When these clash, how do we choose? It can be hard to side against our own ‘kind’ (family, ethnic group, political camp, or church affiliation) even if we feel that someone who is ‘one of us’ goes against allegiance to God. Thus, Christians from south-east Asia may struggle with the tension between ancestor worship required by their parents and God’s call to worship Him only. For Jews to contemplate becoming a Christian can feel like the betrayal of their people. For Christian churches that receive complaints about their leaders whether it involves embezzlement, adultery or other immorality it is sometimes hard to believe those accusations and listen to outside advice about dealing with them. In some countries, politics can be so bound up with religious convictions that it is difficult to acknowledge wrongdoing on ‘our side’ because it can feel like treachery against all that the group stands for. This is not to say that loyalty to our convictions and those who represent them are wrong, but the key is that our reference point must be God and all other loyalties should be submitted to and examined in that light.

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[1] Hebrew narrative often uses repetition to emphasise a theme and these verses teem with kinship terms (mother, father, son, relative [lit. brother], clan, household, mother’s father, bone and flesh).

[2] Daniel I. Block, Judges, Ruth, NAC 6 (Nashville: B&H, 1999), 312.

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