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Context No. 329 of 4322 · Judges

Context · Reflection

Judges 9:39-45: in context

39Gaal went out before the men of Shechem, and fought with Abimelech. 40Abimelech chased him, and he fled before him, and many fell wounded, even to the entrance of the gate. 41Abimelech lived at Arumah; and Zebul drove out Gaal and his brothers, that they should not dwell in Shechem. 42On the next day, the people went out into the field; and they told Abimelech. 43He took the people and divided them into three companies, and laid wait in the field; and he looked, and behold, the people came out of the city. So, he rose up against them and struck them. 44Abimelech and the companies that were with him rushed forward and stood in the entrance of the gate of the city; and the two companies rushed on all who were in the field and struck them. 45Abimelech fought against the city all that day; and he took the city and killed the people in it. He beat down the city and sowed it with salt.

Abimelech is one of the darkest figures in Judges. A son of Gideon by a concubine, he seized power by murdering his seventy brothers on a single stone, and the city of Shechem crowned him king. This passage comes after Shechem has turned against him, and it shows what Abimelech does when he wins.

He does not simply put down the rebellion. He ambushes the townspeople as they go out to their fields, splitting his forces to cut off their retreat, and fights against the city all day until he takes it. Then he kills the people in it, tears the city down, and does one more thing that reveals what is driving him: he sows the ground with salt. Salting a ruined city was a symbolic curse, meant to render the soil dead, to declare that nothing should ever grow here again. Winning was not enough for Abimelech. He needed to guarantee that the place could have no future at all, to poison the ground so that even the possibility of new life was gone. It is scorched-earth vengeance in its purest form, and it fits the man, whose whole rise was built on killing his own kin, and whose story ends soon after with his own violent death.

There is a warning in the salt. In a conflict, there is a difference between wanting to prevail and wanting to make sure the other side, or the relationship, can never recover, and the second impulse poisons ground I will have to live near for the rest of my life. When I have been wronged and have the upper hand, do I aim only to win the point, or do I quietly want to salt the earth, so that nothing between us can ever grow again?

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