Thus, God punished Abimelech for the evil he had done against his father by murdering his seventy brothers. - Judges 9:56
Abimelech was the son of Gideon’s concubine from Shechem. He had seventy half brothers and fought with them all. In every aspect of his life, Abimelech rejected truth and integrity. He went to his mother’s hometown of Shechem—a city that had lived in peace with Israel up to that point. Once Abimelech arrived, he schemed to get the people of Shechem to make him their king and then persuaded them that all seventy of his Israelite half brothers needed to be eliminated. So the people joined Abimelech in returning home and slaughtering all but one of his brothers.
But Abimelech’s actions would not go unpunished. God makes it known that he is angry with those who abandon truth and integrity. It took an unknown but determined woman to finish off Abimelech. From the top of the tower that Abimelech was attacking this woman threw down a millstone on his head (Judges 9:52-53).
The story of Abimelech highlights what happens when pride rules a person’s heart. Too often truth and integrity are sacrificed to the god of pride. Truth and integrity ought to have been the mark of the people of God—especially their leaders. Abimelech had no truth or integrity whatsoever.
God always honors people who are on his side—the side of truth and integrity. He will search for, find, and use men and women ready to live by grace and faith and drop truth’s millstones on the head of untruth and dishonesty, smashing them to smithereens!
For Further Study: Judges 9:22-57
Excerpted from The One Year Devotions for Women, Copyright ©2000 by Jill Briscoe. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved.
For more from Jill Briscoe, please visit TellingtheTruth.org.
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