In literary terms, the word “fable” denotes 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. The most famous examples, of course, are Aesop's Fables. Most of these short stories involve talking animals. In contrast, the two examples of fables in the Old Testament are found in Judges 9:8-15 and II Kings 14:9. And just like Aesop's Fables, these biblical stories were 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.
Judges 9:8-15
The historical setting here is that Gideon has just died, leaving behind 70 legitimate sons and one illegitimate son, Abimelech. He goes to his mother's people, the Shechemites and convinces them to pay for assassins to kill all of his brothers to clear his way to the leadership of Israel. One of Gideon's sons, Jotham, manages to escape and from a high hill tells a fable to the Shechemites in which the trees wish to appoint a king over them and approach in turn an olive tree, a fig tree, and a grape vine, all of whom turn down the job because they have more productive things to do. In the end, they settle for a lowly bramble. Abimelech soon meets his fate at the hand of a women and God metes his justice out on the Shechemites as well for them abetting the murders.
Concerning Judges 9:8-15, 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, and more likely, 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. In other words, he could say that he was one of them. This same warped reasoning has caused numerous incompetent politicians to become elected simply because they came from the right race, had the same accent, could promise the moon if elected, or had shown some sort of prior expertise in an entirely different field.
I have witnessed the same principle at work in the business world and, sadly, within the church. At one church I attended, elders were selected almost exclusively from the ranks of professionals and owners of successful businesses. At the same time, there was an unusually large a number of Christian missionaries at our congregation who were entirely overlooked for that position. And at another church, elders were chosen by seniority. At a certain point, each male in turn would be told, “It is your time to serve.”
Another point to make is that the Shechemites refused to recognize the obvious fact that Abimelech only sought the office of king to see what he could get out of it, not from any altruistic desire to serve the nation. As J. Gray says, “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.” And again, I have witnessed the same thing in a congregation going through a period in between senior pastors. The junior pastors began vying for the position between themselves.
As Dale 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 very well to this because our laboratory director once called me into his office for a meeting with my manager. He told me that there was an opening in a supervisory position and wanted to know if I was interested in being considered for it. I told him that I was very flattered by the offer but was perfectly content to stay a bench chemist. I then suggested two very competent chemists whom he should contact instead. At that point, in his typical manner, he shouted at me at the top of his voice, “Do you think I would be talking to you if those two had not already turned me down!!”
I was no longer quite so flattered as I had been a minute earlier. Apparently, I was not the olive tree or the fig tree. But at least I could console myself with being the grapevine instead of the bramble.
This fact may take many forms within a congregation. One familiar scenario is that in which you will find the same overworked members stepping up to fill one volunteer position after another simply because no one else cared to do it. That usually continues until those loyal helpers either suffer from total burn-out or quit the church in despair. It is only at that point that you may see others decide to start sharing the load.
II Kings 14:9
This is the only other true fable present in the Bible. In this case, it is the king of Israel (Jehoash) who warns the king of Judah (Amaziah) in a story that he had better not engage him in battle because he will be sure to lose. The fable he relates is not couched in the most diplomatic terms since it compares the king of Judah to a thorn bush making a demand on a cedar tree. P.R. House says, “Jehoash counsels his counterpart to be happy with small victories [in Edom] and to avoid tangling with a nation that can whip Syria.” But Amaziah refuses to listen to reason, and the result is that Joash captured Amaziah, destroyed part of the wall of Jerusalem, looted the temple, and took Judean prisoners. This is all due to Amaziah's grandiose view of himself and his own abilities.
Jesus may in fact have been pointing back to this very example when he asked the rhetorical question in Luke 14:31 – “What king, going to encounter another king in war will not sit down first and take counsel whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand?” Apparently, the answer is “Amaziah.”
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 puncture 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.
Similarly, Tiemeyer notes, “Both parables are political in their function, and both use the motifs of brambles and cedars, although the Hebrew word for 'bramble' differs...In both parables the bramble is the focal point, portraying the characters of Abimelech and Amaziah.” And finally, both stories have lessons for Christians today which deserve to be taken seriously.
Paul provides the best commentary on both of these fables:
“I bid every one among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment...” (Romans 12:3)
“If anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself.” (Galatians 6:3)
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