Commentaria in Judices
By four reasons Gaal stirs up the Sichemites to rebel against the king Abimelech chosen by themselves. The first is: “Who is Abimelech?” as if to say: Abimelech is the vilest of the Sichemites, being the son of a concubine, a parricide, a tyrant. It is therefore unworthy to suffer him to lord it over the Sichemites and Israel. The second: “What is Sichem?” as if to say: Sichem is a noble, ancient, powerful and rich city, in which there are many wise and eminent men worthy of rule. Who then would bear that the infamous Abimelech should lord it over them? The third: “Is he not the son of Jerobaal?” that is, of Gedeon, who profaned your god Baal and overthrew his altar? as if to say: Gedeon overthrew your god Baal, and Abimelech is the son of Gedeon. What then is to be expected from this son, but like examples of his father’s boldness, to destroy Baal and your divinities? The fourth: “And hath appointed Zebul his servant ruler over the men of Hemor the father of Sichem.” As if he said: Abimelech has set over the Sichemites as his prince and deputy Zebul, an ignoble and hated servant: it is therefore unworthy that we should obey him. For who would suffer a vile servant to lord it over free and noble men? He calls the Sichemites “the men of Hemor the father of Sichem,” because they were citizens of the city of Sichem, in which, 500 years before, that famous prince in Genesis, Hemor, the father of Sichem, who gave his name to the city, had reigned, Gen. xxxiii and xxxiv. Hence the antiquity and dignity of the Sichemites can be estimated, so that it is not to be borne that Zebul, a vile slave, should rule and govern it. By these reasons Gaal persuaded the Sichemites to go on rebelling against king Abimelech, and drive him from the kingdom, and he offered himself to them as leader to it, whence he adds:
WOULD TO GOD SOME MAN WOULD GIVE ME THIS PEOPLE, THAT I MIGHT REMOVE ABIMELECH FROM THE MIDST OF THEM!—that I myself might reign in his stead.
Moreover the Septuagint call Zebul bishop, that is, overseer and governor of Sichem. So Cicero calls himself Bishop, that is, Governor of Campania.
Finally the Hebrew, from other points which the Massoretes substituted, now reads otherwise; namely thus: “Is not he the son of Jerobaal, and Zebul his officer? Serve ye the men of Hemor the father of Sichem; and why should we serve him?” Which words are obscure, and scarcely have a clear sense. Wherefore the punctuation and version of St. Jerome, as it is plainer, is also truer, especially because the Septuagint agree with it.
“fights,” that is, besieges, occupies, oppresses the citizens and the city. For Gaal was in the city of Sichem itself, urging the citizens to rebel against Abimelech, it is tsarim, that is, as the Chaldee, he straitens; the Septuagint, besieges; Vatablus, occupies.
37. AND GAAL SAID AGAIN: BEHOLD A PEOPLE FROM THE NAVEL OF THE EARTH.—“From the navel,” that is, from the summit of the mountains, as he said in the preceding verse. For as the navel stands out in a man, so the mountains rise in the earth. So Abulensis, Arias, Vatablus. Again, as the navel is as it were the centre or middle in a man, so that if you fix one foot of a compass in the navel as in a centre, and from it carry the other foot round through the man’s outstretched hands and feet, you will describe a perfect circle about the man: so likewise mountains are as it were in the middle of the land lying round about and in view, so that a man standing on a mountain as in a centre can, as it were, survey with his eyes the land lying below all round in a circle. So Jerusalem, Ezech. xxxviii, 12, is called the navel of the earth, because it was the middle and as it were the centre of the earth then inhabited and known. So Pliny, book III, chap. xii, calls the Reatine lake the navel of Italy; Livy calls the region of the Aetolians the navel of Greece; Cicero, Action 6 against Verres, names the forest of Enna the navel of Sicily.
AND ONE TROOP COMETH BY THE WAY THAT LOOKETH TOWARD THE OAK.—In the Hebrew the oak is added, the oak of meonenim, that is, of the enchanters; the Septuagint, of the observers; Vatablus, of augurs. The Chaldee and Pagninus keep the Hebrew name Meonenim as a proper name. A certain oak is therefore designated here by the word Meonenim, then known, now unknown.
43. ON THE NEXT DAY, THEREFORE, THE PEOPLE WENT OUT INTO THE FIELD,—not to finish the rest of the vintage, as Josephus and Procopius would have it, but to fight against Abimelech. Whence it follows:
HE TOOK HIS ARMY AND DIVIDED IT INTO THREE COMPANIES;—namely, he kept one company for himself, and with it attacked and took the city of Sichem, emptied by the citizens going out into the field; but the other two he ordered to pursue the Sichemites who had gone out of the city, and to slay them all, and in this way he destroyed all the citizens together with the city. So Abulensis and Arias.
45. AND IT BEING DESTROYED, SO THAT HE SCATTERED SALT IN IT,—not so much to dry up the city and render it barren; for salt, because it is fiery, eats away, burns and dries up all germs, Ps. cvi, 34; Deut. xxix, 23; Jerem. xvii, 6; Soph. ii, 9. So Vesuvius, the mountain near Naples, recently belching ashes, dried up all the fields round about, but only for a time; for ashes are salty. But this is wont to be done by enemies to fields, not to a city, since a city is not tilled nor sown, but inhabited and dwelt in. Abimelech therefore did this to signify his extreme anger and indignation against Sichem. Abulensis thinks that it was an ancient custom to punish cities by sprinkling salt in them, in the crime of treason.
Abulensis adds that Abimelech punished the Sichemites justly in this way, because they had of their own accord received him as king, and a little after had inflicted most grievous injuries on him. For so a king justly punishes subjects rebelling against him. But Abimelech was not a lawful king, but a tyrant and usurper of the kingdom; for neither God nor the rest of the tribes had made him king, but a few Sichemites, who had not the power and right to create a king of all Israel.
46. IN THE TOWER OF THE SICHEMITES.—Serarius and others with probability think that this tower is the town of Mello, which had rebelled with the Sichemites against king Abimelech. It is called a tower because in it was a high citadel fortified like a tower. It is called “of the Sichemites” because it was their colony. For the Mellonites, hearing of the destruction of the Sichemites, ill at ease in conscience and fearing the same for themselves, fled to this tower, to defend themselves in it against Abimelech.
OF THEIR GOD BERITH.—Abbreviated, for in full he was called Baalberith, as is plain from verse 4.
48. HE WENT UP INTO MOUNT SELMON,—near Sichem and Mello, of which Ps. lxvii, 15.
50. THEBES.—It was a city in Judea, “on the borders of Neapolis, for those going to Scythopolis, about the thirteenth milestone from it, which Abimelech besieging was killed, struck by a piece of a millstone,” says St. Jerome in the Hebrew Places, Eusebius, Adrichomius and others. Wherefore this is a different city from Thebes in Egypt, from which came the Theban soldiers and martyrs, whose leader was St. Maurice; there was also another Thebe in Greece, from which the Thebans were named, whose leader was Epaminondas. Moreover this Thebes of Juda is different from Thesba, from which the prophet Elias was surnamed the Thesbite, as St. Jerome, Eusebius, Adrichomius, Borchard and others teach against Lyranus. Moreover Thebes in Hebrew is the same as oval or muddy, says Pagninus, and this is apt here; for there Abimelech, his head, which is of oval shape, being broken, fell into mud and earth and died.
53. A PIECE OF A MILLSTONE,—a fragment of a millstone.
54. LEST IT BE SAID THAT I WAS SLAIN BY A WOMAN.—So Abimelech, who all his life had sought the glory of a kingdom, was justly punished by an inglorious death, slain by a woman. Justly he perished, struck by a stone, who had slain seventy brothers upon a stone. So Pyrrhus king of the Epirotes miserably perished at Argos, struck by a tile thrown down by a woman, as Plutarch testifies.
And the terror of the world, the scourge of God, Attila king of the Huns, was struck by a woman with a knife, says Marcellinus. And Hermann, king of the Saxons, attacking a citadel in disguise, was killed by a stone thrown down by a woman, as Aventinus testifies, book V. Wherefore that Gentile in Virgil, Aeneid X, thus consoles one falling:
Yet this thou shalt, unhappy, take as comfort for thy wretched death; thou fallest by the right hand of great Aeneas.
Morally, Theodoret, Question XVI: “From what befell Abimelech and the Sichemites,” he says, “we learn that a wicked agreement brings destruction on those who use it, and at last ends in dissension; since those who had slain the children of Gedeon perished by mutual blows.”
Finally, in Abimelech that saying was true: “He entered like a fox, reigned like a lion, died like a dog,” struck not by a staff, but by a stone from a woman.