“Then Jotham fled, escaping to Beer, and he lived there because he was afraid of his brother Abimelek. After Abimelek had governed Israel three years, God stirred up animosity between Abimelek and the citizens of Shechem so that they acted treacherously against Abimelek. God did this in order that the crime against Jerubbaal’s seventy sons, the shedding of their blood, might be avenged on their brother Abimelek and on the citizens of Shechem, who had helped him murder his brothers.”
The family tree. If you have never had someone look up your genealogy and put your relatives on a family tree, then you should try to do it. My Aunt Janet did this for my dad’s side of family, tracking them back to the their home in Poland before they immigrated to the US. She even wrote a book that details out most of them did for work and where they lived. There is always one on the tree that you shake your head and think, “Wow, that man was crazy!” For us it was “Hell fire Jack” (a nickname from history). He spent time in prison, Huntsville, and was also a deputy sheriff in Round Rock, TX. There is more to his story and it is really a page turner.
Gideon had a family tree that looked like Bermuda grass. He had many wives over the years and produced seventy sons of his own. One of which was a son from a slave girl in Shechem named Abimelek. After Gideon died, he assembled all of his family and asked the town of Shechem who should rule them, foreigners or Abimelek from their own town. The town chose Abimelek. Here is where things get crazy. Abimelek received seventy shekels of silver (about 2 lbs.) and used it to hire “scoundrels” to murder all seventy brothers in Shechem. The only brother to get away was Jotham, the youngest.
From a hilltop, Jotham curses his brother for the things he has done and flees to Beer because he was afraid of him. Verse 23 tells us that God stirred up animosity between Abimelek and the citizens of Shechem in order to enact justice for Abimelek’s crimes. Right on time, a battle on the horizon between the people of Shechem and Abimelek arose. Lots of details are in chapter 9 of judges, but in the end, Abimelek gets a millstone thrown down on his head by a women of Shechem and he has his armor bearer kill him. Gideon’s family tree has one more branch that ends. The end of that chapter tells us that God repaid the wickedness that Abimelek had done to his father by murdering seventy brothers. God also made the people of Shechem pay for all their wickedness.
Jotham warned the people of their wickedness before all this mess started, but the people chose to go with Abimelek instead. Jotham was the youngest of seventy brothers, one you would not think of as very important or note worthy. In Proverbs, it tells us many attributes of a fool, one of them is that fools seem to repeat their folly. In other words, they don’t learn the first time and repeat the same mistakes over and over again. We can add up all the folly from Gideon to Abimelek and it would be a lot. I am sure our folly’s would also fill up a page or two.
Today, make sure that you take very careful notes on who is influencing you. Abimelek convinced a whole town of wickedness and they ignored the murder and tertiary. They became blind to sin, which is what can happen to you if you don’t keep God the Father in the middle of your every day life. Every day, put the Father on the throne of your life and subject everything else that goes on in your day under His authority. Heed the warnings and guiding of the Holy Spirit and you will avoid some major pitfalls. No one listened to Jotham. Will you listen to the wisdom of the Lord today?
Let It Go 
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