Judges 9:54

_THEN HE CALLED HASTILY UNTO THE YOUNG MAN HIS ARMOURBEARER, AND SAID UNTO HIM, DRAW THY SWORD, AND SLAY ME, THAT MEN SAY NOT OF ME, A WOMAN SLEW HIM. AND HIS YOUNG MAN THRUST HIM THROUGH, AND HE DIED._ No JFB commentary on these verses....

50-57 The Shechemites were ruined by Abimelech; now he is reckoned with, who was their leader in villany. Evil pursues sinners, and sometimes overtakes them, when not only at ease, but triumphant. Though wickedness may prosper a while, it will not prosper always. The history of mankind, if truly told, would greatly resemble that of this chapter. The records of what are called splendid events present to us such contests for power. Such scenes, though praised of men, fully explain the Scripture doctrine of the deceitfulness and desperate wickedness of the human heart, the force of men's lust, and the effect of Satan's influence. Lord, thou has given us thy word of truth and righteousness, O pour upon us thy spirit of purity, peace, and love, and write thy holy law in our hearts....

Verse Judges 9:54. _DRAW THY SWORD, AND SLAY ME_] It was a disgrace to be killed by a woman; on this account, Seneca the tragedian deplores the death of Hercules: - _O turpe fatum! femina Herculeae necis_ _Autor feritur_. HERC. OETAEUS, ver. 1177. "O dishonourable fate! a woman is reported to have been author of the death of Hercules." Abimelech was also afraid that if he fell thus mortally wounded into the hands of his enemies they might treat him with cruelty and insult....

EXPOSITION JUDGES 9:22 HAD REIGNED. The Hebrew word here used is quite a different one from that in Judges 9:8, Judges 9:10, Judges 9:12, Judges 9:14, and elsewhere, where the reign of a king is designated. It means to exercise dominion, to be a chief or captain over a people. The use of it here suggests that though, as we read in Judges 9:6, the Canaanite men of Shechem and the house of Millo had made him their king, yet he was not made king b

THEN HE CALLED HASTILY TO THE YOUNG MAN HIS ARMOURBEARER,.... Perceiving it was a mortal blow that was given him, and he should soon expire; and that the cast of the stone was by the hand of a woman, and therefore he was in haste to have the young man come to him: AND SAID UNTO HIM, DRAW THY SWORD AND SLAY ME, THAT MEN SAY NOT OF ME, A WOMAN SLEW HIM; it being reckoned very ignominious and reproachful to die by the hand of a woman, and especially any great personage, as a king or general of an army s; to avoid this, he chose rather to be guilty of suicide, or of what cannot well be excused from it, and so died by suicide; which, added to all his other sins, he seemed to have no sense of, or repentance for; and the method he took to conceal the shame of his death served the more to spread it; for this circumstance of his death could not be given without the reason of it, and which was re...

CHAPTER 9 ABIMELECH THE KING AND HIS WICKEDNESS _ 1. The murder of Gideon's sons (Judges 9:1)_ 2. Jotham's parable (Judges 9:7) 3. Scenes of strife and destruction of Shechem (Judges 9:22) 4. Abimelech's end (Judges 9:50) The story of Abimelech is intensely interesting in its typical meaning. Abimelech was the offspring of an unlawful union: the son of Gideon and the concubine in Shechem. He was half Israelite and half Canaanite. Abimelech means “my father was king”; he claims therefore supremacy, lordship over the people Israel on the basis of succession. His father had refused that honor; the bastard offspring

THE DEATH OF ABIMELECH. He went on burning and destroying till from the tower of Thebez (p. 30) a woman threw a mill-stone which crashed through his skull. That he might not be said to have died by a woman's hand he begged his armour-bearer to give him the _coup de grace._ His death scene is strikingly like that of Saul, in whose person the kingship was revived (2 Samuel 1:9). Judges 9:56. The closing verses point the moral of a tale which Greek poets would have woven into a tragic drama of fate. In the field of destiny men reap as they have sown....

A WOMAN SLEW. See note on Judges 4:21....

_armourbearer_ Cf. Jdg 7:10 f., 1 Samuel 31:4. _and kill me and dispatch me_, i.e. give the death stroke; cf. 1 Samuel 14:13; 1 Samuel 17:51, especially 2 Samuel 1:9 f. The first aspirant to kingship and the first real king in Israel met their deaths in the same way....

_Death of Abimelech Judges 9:50-57_ 50 Then went Abimelech to Thebez, and encamped against Thebez, and took it. 51 But there was a strong tower within the city, and thither fled all the men and women, and all they of the city, and shut it to them, and gat them up to the top of the tower. 52 And Abimelech came unto the tower, and fought against it, and went hard unto the door of the tower to burn it with fire. 53 And a certain woman cast a piece of a millstone upon Abimelech's head, and all to break his skull. 54 Then he called hastily unto the young man his armourbearer, and said unto him, Draw thy sword, and slay me, that men say not of me, A woman slew him. And his young man thrust him through, and he died, 55 And when the men of Israel saw that Abimelech was dead, they departed every man unto his place. 56 Thus God rendered the wickedness of Abimelech, which he