Articles
Was Abimelech A Judge?
Although Judges 9:22 says he reigned, it never says he judged Israel. There are two ways men may rise to power: 1st, power can be granted to them. In Judges, God raised up Othniel, Ehud, Deborah and Gideon. A 2nd way men rise to power is by force – they seize it. Such was the case of Abimelech. He came to power by murdering his brothers.
Also, Gideon was raised up by God & there was peace (8:32-35). That is something that did not happen under Abimelech. In fact, he caused a lot of trouble during his time (9:23-24).
Another feature regarding judges is that they were raised up to save Israel from some enemy but Abimelech did not save Israel. If anything, he was among the oppressors of Israel.
My view is Abimelech was a ruler in Israel (a bad one) but should not be counted as a judge of Israel. He doesn’t match God’s definition of what a judge was during this time period (cf. Judges 2:14-19).
P.S. During the sermon, I made a comment that when Abimelech was reigning there didn’t seem to be any evidence that God was doing anything about his wickedness. From man’s viewpoint, it looked like God was absent. Al Sandlin sent me an interesting quote that I really liked: “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”
Since we are almost halfway through the book of Judges, we will take a break from the study for a couple of weeks. With the holidays, people visiting in other places and many other disrupting scenarios, it is a good time to take this break.
