Lives of Scripture

Jotham was the youngest of Gideon's seventy sons, and the only one to escape when his half-brother Abimelech, backed by the leading men of Shechem, hired reckless men to murder all seventy of them on one stone in order to make himself king unopposed (Judges 9:1-5). Standing on top of Mount Gerizim, overlooking Shechem, Jotham shouted down Scripture's earliest extended parable: the trees, he said, went looking for a king, and offered the crown first to the olive tree, then the fig tree, then the vine, each of which refused to abandon its useful fruitfulness for the sake of ruling over others -- until finally the thornbush, good for nothing, accepted, warning that if the offer wasn't made in good faith, fire would come out from the thornbush and devour even the cedars of Lebanon (9:7-15). Jotham then applied the parable directly: if Shechem had acted in good faith and honor toward Gideon's family by supporting Abimelech, so be it; if not, let fire consume both Abimelech and Shechem together (9:16-20). Jotham then fled and is not heard from again in the narrative, but his warning proved exactly accurate -- within three years, God sent a spirit of discord between Abimelech and Shechem, and the two destroyed each other in the fighting that followed, fulfilling Jotham's curse to the letter (9:22-24, 56-57).