Study Desk

The next day the people of Shechem went out to the fields, and this was reported to Abimelech.

So he took his men, divided them into three companies and set an ambush in the fields. When he saw the people coming out of the city, he rose to attack them.

Abimelech and the companies with him rushed forward to a position at the entrance to the city gate. Then two companies rushed upon those in the fields and struck them down.

All that day Abimelech pressed his attack against the city until he had captured it and killed its people. Then he destroyed the city and scattered salt over it.

On hearing this, the citizens in the tower of Shechem went into the stronghold of the temple of El-Berith.

When Abimelech heard that they had assembled there,

he and all his men went up Mount Zalmon. He took an ax and cut off some branches, which he lifted to his shoulders. He ordered the men with him, "Quick! Do what you have seen me do!"

So all the men cut branches and followed Abimelech. They piled them against the stronghold and set it on fire over the people inside. So all the people in the tower of Shechem, about a thousand men and women, also died.

Next Abimelech went to Thebez and besieged it and captured it.

Inside the city, however, was a strong tower, to which all the men and women-all the people of the city-fled. They locked themselves in and climbed up on the tower roof.

Abimelech went to the tower and stormed it. But as he approached the entrance to the tower to set it on fire,

a woman dropped an upper millstone on his head and cracked his skull.

Hurriedly he called to his armor-bearer, "Draw your sword and kill me, so that they can't say, 'A woman killed him.' " So his servant ran him through, and he died.

When the Israelites saw that Abimelech was dead, they went home.

Thus God repaid the wickedness that Abimelech had done to his father by murdering his seventy brothers.

God also made the men of Shechem pay for all their wickedness. The curse of Jotham son of Jerub-Baal came on them.