JOTHAM'S FABLE (JUDGES 9)

The popular definition of “fable” or “myth” in most people's mind is simply “a lie.” However, as literary terms, that is not what they denote. I will propose a working definition of fable as a fabricated story with a correspondence to a deeper reality but involving plants, animals or inanimate objects acting and talking as if they were human beings. Aesop's Fables provide, of course, a prime example. With that in mind, consider first some passages in the Bible that might be mistakenly labeled as fables.

    As Jesus enters Jerusalem and the people shout out “Hosanna!,” he says that it they hadn't done so the very rocks would have cried out. This concept does involve inanimate objects speaking, but it is better described as hyperbole – a sentence exaggerated in order to forcefully make a point.

    Several times in the Old Testament, the sun and moon are asked by a prophet to witness a heavenly trial. This is a case of apostrophe – directly addressing something that cannot respond as if it were a human being.

    When the prophet in Amos 4:1calls the Samaritan women “cows of Bashan” or David in Psalm 22:12 calls his enemies “bulls of Bashan,” they are using the literary form of metaphor.

    In the story of Baalam's ass, we have the account of a talking donkey. But in its context, this is not a fable (unless you are a rather liberal Bible scholar or skeptic) but instead a straightforward historical narrative containing an obviously supernatural occurrence.

    When Peter says in I Peter 2:22, “The dog turns back to its own vomit” and “The sow is washed only to wallow in the mud,” he is using the actions of animals as parallels to those of people who turn away from the truth in order to again embrace a lie. However, these are proverbs and not fables since there are no unusual behaviors of the animals involved.

    Some of the dreams in the Joseph stories appear to almost fit the definition of fables. Thus, we have the sun and moon bowing down to him as well as sheaves of wheat eating one another. The only thing that keeps these from being considered as fables is the fact that no person fabricated these stories, they were dreams obviously coming directly from God.

    The same can be said for visions even though those in Daniel 7-8 do involve a number of animals in them. Of course, in those visions the impossible details concern the nature of the animals themselves rather than their actions. The closest parallel to the category of fables are parables since they are fabricated narratives designed to convey deeper meanings. The major difference between the two is that although parables may contain surprising and sometime exaggerated happenings, they never concern totally impossible ones.

So if we eliminate all of the above types of biblical examples, is there anything left in the Bible that could really be called a fable? In fact, there are two, and they are found in Judges 9:8-15 and II Kings 14:9. I will mainly concentrate on the first of these, even though I have previously presented a verse-by-verse comments on “Judges 9” (see that post in this blog). This time, however, I would like to treat the parable as a whole and discuss its overall meaning and parallels elsewhere in the Bible. But you should review the details of the whole chapter on your own first.

Just like Aesop's Fables, this biblical story was only told so as to teach a moral. But here, as in most of Jesus' parables, there is some uncertainty concerning the original intent of story. Dale Davis says, “Jotham has caused interpreters to flounder on his fable.” And that is somewhat to be expected since even the parables can be viewed from various perspectives. In the case of Jotham's short tale, at least three different lessons have been gleaned from it by scholars:

    1. It is a renunciation of the whole concept of any kingship other than God's.

This explanation is not much espoused today, and the only thing in its favor is that Abimelech's father, Gideon, refused the kingship when it was offered to him (Judges 8:22-23). However, that refusal has been explained by some scholars as not a rejection of the idea of human kingship, just the fact that the people were wanting to chose him for the wrong reason, his prowess in battle. This introduces a second interpretation of the fable.

    2. Jotham is not rejecting the idea of kingship, only the choosing of a totally incompetent ruler.

All Abimelech has to offer the people of Shechem is the fact that, in contrast to Gideon's other 71 sons, he has a mother who is a Shechemite (Judges 9:3). J. Gray: “So the kingship sought and secured by personal ambition, without call, gift or a sense of responsibility, but for one's own sole advantage, bodes only ill.”

One of the laboratories I worked in was headed up by a man who felt that the only qualification for entrance into management was to have generated a large number of patents. He happened to be qualified in that manner himself, but that skill certainly didn't transfer to any managerial competence.

In this regard, Davis also applies this fable to the realms of politics (I will wisely refrain from pointing out any parallels in recent American politics) and the church.

I have attended a number of churches in my life and have noted some parallels with the methods by which those who are elder-led come up with their candidates for that office. At one congregation, the mantra was “It's your turn!” In other words, they were chosen by sort of a seniority system where every man eventually was picked to be an elder regardless of qualification. The next church we attended had no better a method than that. It was obvious that you needed to be a financially successful independent businessman or professional in order to be considered. In fact, I found out later from one of the staff that biblical qualifications found in the Pastoral Epistles were seldom taken into account.

Davis notes: “Jotham's theme is the foolishness and peril of accepting clearly unqualified leadership. Brambles make good fuel but poor kings; they burn better than they reign.”

    3. E. Maly offers a third possibility: the fable is directed mainly at the competent individuals at Shechem who should have stepped forward into leadership roles but refused to do so in order to concentrate on their own personal preoccupations. I can relate to this because our laboratory director once called all of the chemists into a meeting and chewed us out because there was an opening in a management position and none of those contacted had wanted it (I was actually the third one approached on the subject by him and my response was lukewarm at best).

In favor of this interpretation are verses 8-13 in which all of the useful trees turn down the opportunity to rule since they are busy being productive in other ways. At another laboratory where I worked, I soon reached the somewhat cynical conclusion that the ranks of management had been obviously filled with those who had proved themselves too incompetent to be trusted in the laboratory, and so they were moved upward where they couldn't do much harm. In other words, the bramble bush of verse 14.

Parallels elsewhere in the Bible

Deuteronomy 27-28

In these chapters, Moses describes a ceremony that the people of Israel are to carry out after they have crossed over the Jordan River. It involves the people being assembled in the valley between Mt. Gerizim and Mt. Ebal with half of the tribes facing one mountain and the other half facing the other mountain. Then the curses (represented by Mt. Ebal) and the blessings (represented by Mt. Gerizim) were read in the hearing of all the people. Joshua 8:30-35 describes the people faithfully carrying out these instructions.

Jotham's address to all the people of Shechem in Judges 9 has several parallels to these earlier accounts. He somewhat reverses the picture in Joshua 8 in that he is the one standing on the mountain and shouting down into the valley. And, in fact, the mountain is Mt. Gerizim with the city of Shechem located between that prominence and Mt. Ebal. And another reversal can be seen in that whereas Jotham's address also contains both blessings and curses, it concentrates mainly on the curses even though he is standing on the mountain of blessing instead.

II Kings 14:9

This is another obvious parallel to consider since it is the only other fable present in the Bible. In this case, it is the king of Israel who warns the king of Judah in a fable that he had better not engage him in battle because he will be sure to lose. The fable he relays is not couched in the most diplomatic way since it compares the king of Judah to a thorn bush making a demand on a cedar tree.

Note the similarity to Jotham's fable in which the king is likened to a bramble bush. In both cases, a fable is used to lampoon the pretensions of an inferior king. Boling points out that the comparison to a “cedar of Lebanon” in both stories suggests that it “was the usual metaphor for self-sufficient monarchs.” He also remarks that the key verb abar (“come, pass by”) appears in both fables.

I Samuel 22:14-23

But there is one more similar passage in the OT that I have detected, although I haven't yet seen any commentators who make the same identification with Jotham's fable. That is the story of David and Saul. See if you don't agree that there are parallel stories conveyed in both cases.

    A king attempts to wipe out any other pretenders to the throne even though they may have been totally innocent of that motive. In the case of Saul, it was David that he attempted to kill whereas with Abimelech it was the 70 legitimate sons of Gideon (Judges 9:1-4).

    Both stories involve the rare occasions when God sent an evil spirit in order to defeat the king's plans (Judges 9:23; I Samuel 16-19).

    Abimelech's major sin was killing 70 innocent half-brothers whereas Saul killed 85 innocent priests of God.

    Abimelech (“my father is king”) does the killing in Judges 9 whereas Ahimelech (“my brother is king”) is killed by Saul in I Samuel 22.

    The two slaughters mentioned above mark the downfall of each king as demonstrated by key words in each story acting as bookends. To explain, note that Abimelech has his half-brothers killed on a single stone (Judges 9:5). Several commentators have said that they can find no reason for this particular detail to have been included in the Bible. However, the answer is found in the fact that Abimelech will meet his fate when a women beans him on the head with a single stone thrown from a tower (Judges 9:53).

Turning next to Saul and his downward spiral, right before he has the priests slaughtered the text says that he was sitting under a tamarisk tree (I Samuel 22:6). Again, there seems to be no earthly reason why that fact should have been included in the story until one considers that Saul ends up being killed and buried under a tamarisk tree (I Samuel 31:13). The fact that “tamarisk tree” only appears in these two places in the whole Old Testament demonstrates that the detail was purposely included so as to demonstrate God's divine justice, just as “one stone” functions in the story of Abimelech.

    But between these two kings' grievous sins and their well-deserved deaths is the heart of the comparison between the respective stories. In the case of Jotham, it turns out that he is the only one to escape the slaughter of his brothers (Judges 9:5) in order to pronounce the judgment that will come to the king. In the case of Saul, it is Abiathar who is the only one of Ahimelech's sons to escape death, and that is in order that he can inform David of what has happened and deliver the priestly ephod to him, which will be used to help David elude capture.

    But the key correspondence between the two accounts happens next in each story. Jotham delivers his indictment of the king and his followers from a mountain where he can't be easily attacked by his audience below. He asks the people of Shechem to carefully consider the course they are taking and warns them that they may be consumed by it. In the case of David, he also confronts Saul (from a higher elevation) with his sin in order to give his a chance to repent. Saul appears to do so, but soon resumes his bloodthirsty path, as does Abimelech.