Judges 9:6 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

All the men of Shechem That is, the great men, the chief magistrates of the city; and the house of Millo Either some eminent and potent family living in or near Shechem, or the common council, the full house, or house of fulness, as the word signifies; those that met in their court-house or place of general assembly; g athered together Not to prosecute and punish Abimelech for this most barbarous murder, as they ought to have done, he being one of their citizens, but to make him a king. God was not consulted whether they should have any king at all, much less who it should be. They did not advise with the high-priest, or with their brethren of any other city or tribe, though it was designed that he should reign over all Israel, Judges 9:22; but the Shechemites take upon them to do all of themselves, as if they were the men, and wisdom must die with them. In the mean time the rest of the Israelites were so very stupid and infatuated as to sit by unconcerned. They took no care to give any check to this usurpation, to protect the sons of Gideon, or to avenge their death; but tamely submitted to the bloody tyrant, as men that, with their religion, had lost their reason, and all sense of honour and liberty, justice and gratitude. How vigorously had their fathers appeared to avenge the death of the Levite's concubine! and yet so wretchedly degenerate are they now, as not to attempt the revenging of the death of Gideon's sons. It is for this that they are charged with ingratitude, (Judges 8:35,) Neither showed they kindness to the house of Jerubbaal. By the plain of the pillar The Hebrew word אלון, eelon, here rendered plain, also signifies an oak, and therefore some render the passage, By the oak of the pillar; namely, the oak where Joshua erected a pillar, as a witness of the covenant renewed between God and Israel, Joshua 24:26. This place they chose, perhaps, to signify that they still owned Jehovah, and their covenant with him; and did not worship Baal in opposition to, but in conjunction with him, and in subordination to him.