Judges 9:42 - Arthur Peake's Commentary on the Bible

Reader Related Verse
Bible Comments

Abimelech Destroys Shechem. These verses seem to contain a second, independent account of the attack on Shechem, the sequel to Judges 9:22-25.

Judges 9:43. Abimelech adopts the same tactics whereby his father routed the Midianites (Judges 7:16).

Judges 9:44. Read, with the LXX, the company that was with me.

Judges 9:45. To sow a city with salt was to declare symbolically that it was henceforth to be as fruitless and desolate as a salt desert (Deuteronomy 9:23; Psalms 107:34). But, in the case of Shechem, nature itself made that impossible.

Judges 9:46. Read Migdal-Shechem, evidently a town in the neighbourhood. El-berith is another name for Baal-berith (Judges 8:33), which the LXX has here. The translation hold is a guess; the word may mean an underground chamber. Mount Zalmon is unknown.

Judges 9:49. Abimelech burns the town of Shechem; King Bramble's fire devours the cedars as Jotham had predicted.

Related Commentaries of Judges 9:42

Judges 9:42-49

42 And it came to pass on the morrow, that the people went out into the field; and they told Abimelech.

43 And he took the people, and divided them into three companies, and laid wait in the field, and looked, and, behold, the people were come forth out of the city; and he rose up against them, and smote them.

44 And Abimelech, and the company that was with him, rushed forward, and stood in the entering of the gate of the city: and the two other companies ran upon all the people that were in the fields, and slew them.

45 And Abimelech fought against the city all that day; and he took the city, and slew the people that was therein, and beat down the city, and sowed it with salt.

46 And when all the men of the tower of Shechem heard that, they entered into an hold of the house of the god Berith.

47 And it was told Abimelech, that all the men of the tower of Shechem were gathered together.

48 And Abimelech gat him up to mount Zalmon, he and all the people that were with him; and Abimelech took an axe in his hand, and cut down a bough from the trees, and took it, and laid it on his shoulder, and said unto the people that were with him, What ye have seen me do,l make haste, and do as I have done.

49 And all the people likewise cut down every man his bough, and followed Abimelech, and put them to the hold, and set the hold on fire upon them; so that all the men of the tower of Shechem died also, about a thousand men and women.