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Fire Consuming Everything
“And if not, may fire go out from Abimelek and consume the leaders of Shekem and the house of Millo. Then, let fire go out from the leaders of Shekem and the house of Millo and consume Abimelek.”
(Judges 9:20)
Why fire? Sure, fire is a sign of judgment, but more importantly, fire is the only proper way to destroy the brambles (Psalm 58:9). Yet, when the brambles are choking out the forest, there is no good way of burning out the brambles without burning the trees as well. Such is the judgment of Jotham’s parable — he is essentially saying to them that if they think that what they have done is proper, then fine, God will be the judge, but if your conscience convicts you, then let your actions destroy you under God’s hand of wrath.
Paul writes much the same thing in Romans 1, when he speaks of God giving the people up to their sin and lust of their hearts. The point that Paul is making is that one of God’s forms of judgment is to allow people to pursue their lusts, removing his hand of restraint from them, for sin destroys us not only in eternity, but in this life as well. Did the leaders of Shekem know that what they were doing was wrong? Surely they must have. Did the people of whom Paul speaks know that what they were doing was wrong? Again, they must, that is the work of their conscience, yet how often (as Paul also points out) we suppress our conscience and the things that we know are right when we desire to pursue sin.
We sometimes talk about how much times change over the generations. And were we just simply talking about the application of technology, then we are entirely right to do so. My first computer, for example, had 16 Kilobytes of RAM, no hard drive, and took up my whole desktop. Today, I take my MacBook Pro wherever I go. But, if we are talking about human nature, very little has changed. We still are sinners to the core, we still think that the end justifies the means, and we still pursue what we think we want instead of what God thinks is best for us. We still wallow in our sin and are in desperate need of a savior.
Back to Shechem
“And Abimelek, the son of Jeruba’al, went to Shekem, to the brothers of his mother. And he said to them and to the whole clan of the house of his father and mother, saying, ‘Please speak into the ears of all the leaders of Shekem, ‘Which is better for you to rule over you? Seventy men who are all sons of Jeruba’al to rule over you or one man? Remember that I am your bone and your flesh.’ And his mother’s brothers spoke in the ears of all of the leaders of Shekem all of these words. And they bowed their hearts to follow Abimelek because they said, ‘He is our brother.’
(Judges 9:1-3)
As we return to the life of ancient Israel after the death of Gideon (aka Jeruba’al), the scheming of sinful hearts clearly is seen to abound. Of course, one might say, “What do you expect when you have seventy-one sons from numerous wives and a concubine!” How David and Solomon should have learned from the foolish practice of Gideon and his polygamy.
In this case, the sons of Gideon’s wives formed a kind of Council of Seventy to lead the people of Israel. Abimelek, the son of his concubine who grew up in Shekem. What is particularly interesting about growing up in this location is that Shekem (or Shechem as is transliterated in many of our Bibles) is one of the cities of refuge established by Joshua (Joshua 20:7), a place where those guilty of un-premeditated murder may flee for refuge and thus avert the death sentence (Numbers 35:9-15). It would likely have been a place where many thugs and criminal types would have abounded…and these were Abimelek’s kin. It helps us to get a picture of why Abimelek sought to do what he would do next.
There is a great debate as to whether nature or nurture influences us more profoundly. Certainly we must recognize that nature is a significant part of the equation…we are born in sin as a result of the fall. But sinners raising sinners; well, we just compound the problem. Oh, the wicked web we weave when we pursue the lusts of our heart.
The sanctuary cities were to be controlled by the Levites (Numbers 35:6). The principle behind this should have been obvious — use the leaders in the church to guide the refugees toward a life of faith. Yet, Levites are sinners too and thus what this city of refuge has become is more or less a prison and the levites guards on the prison wall. Again, the evil of sinful man begets nothing good in our world. What is even sadder is that, knowing the lessons of history, often the church acts no differently than the pagan world, plotting and conspiring to gain power and influence rather than living submissively according to God’s law…even in the church of Jesus Christ.
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