John Kitto Morning Bible Devotions: June 18

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John Kitto Morning Bible Devotions: June 18


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A Parable

Jdg_9:8-16

It seems to us very probable that one cause of the ill-success of Abimelech’s attempt to establish a kingdom, lay in the general abhorrence at the deed which he committed when he had secured the adhesion of the men of Shechem. Attended by the unprincipled men he had attached to his person, he went down to the abode of his father’s family at Ophrah, and there put to death all his brethren, the sons of Gideon, probably by beheading, “upon one stone.” There is, however, some danger of measuring by our own feelings—and, therefore, too strongly—the impression such a deed was likely to make upon an ancient oriental people. The fact, that Abimelech did commit this barbarous and unnatural atrocity, seems to show that the policy, which has had numerous later examples in the East, had already become usual in the kingdoms around Palestine, from which it was adopted by Abimelech. This aims to secure the throne to the person who ascends it by destroying all his brothers—that the people, if discontented, may be deterred from dethroning or slaying their king by the feeling that there is no one of the royal race to prefer in his stead. This was, for centuries, the regular policy of the Ottoman court, and has only been abandoned within the memory of man. It was also, from a far earlier date, the policy of the Persian court, until it was found that the object might be attained by destroying the eyes, instead of taking the life, of all the sons of the king but the one who reigns. It is on record, that all the sons of Futteh Ali Shah, whose reign terminated only in 1834, grew up in the belief that their eyes would be taken from them on the death of their father. There is a touching incident of one of the boys being seen by an English lady walking about the harem blindfold, in order, as he said, that he might know how to walk when blind, as he knew that his sight would be taken from him when the king his father should die.

One young son of Gideon—indeed the youngest—did, however, escape the massacre. His name was Jotham. One would think that he would have gone and hid himself in the remotest part of the land, striving to keep even his existence a secret from his blood-thirsty brother. But with the astonishing hardihood which we sometimes witness in men in his circumstances, he no sooner heard that the elders of Shechem were going to make Abimelech king, than he determined to take a very extraordinary part in the ceremony. At the time when they were assembled in the valley to inaugurate their chosen king, a voice was heard calling to them from Mount Gerizim. They looked up; and, behold, it was Jotham standing boldly out upon a cliff of the mountain, and inviting their attention to his words: “Hearken unto me, ye men of Shechem, that God may hearken unto you.” Instead of the eager remonstrance or warm protest which they probably expected, he gave them a fable—the most ancient in history, and, in all respects, the first specimen of this kind of composition. It is seven hundred years older than Aesop, the most ancient heathen name in parabolical literature; and it cannot be denied that it is at least equal to anything which that great fabulist produced. As in most works of this description the earliest are the best, we may be prepared to admit that Jotham’s parable, though the oldest that has been preserved, is a perfect specimen of its kind, and in every respect a model for this species of composition.

The trees, he said, went forth to choose a king. First, they went to the olive tree, but the olive tree refused to quit its fatness to go to be promoted over the trees; then they went to the fig-tree, which, in like manner, declined to quit its sweetness; the vine refused also to leave its gladdening wine; and the trees, in their despair, went to the bramble, which considered the matter sagely, and consented to reign on certain conditions which the rich olive or the fruitful vine would not have exacted: “If in truth ye anoint me king over you, then come and put your trust in my shadow; and if not, let fire come out of the bramble, and devour the cedars of Lebanon.” The terse and biting application of this parable to Abimelech is obvious, and was made by Jotham himself ere he fled. There are other applications of it which we may very well make for our own profit.

The reluctance of the trees generally to desert the useful station in which they were planted and fixed, to move to and fro (as the word rendered “promoted” signifies), and to reign over trees, is a wholesome lesson to us of contentment in the stations and lines of private usefulness we respectively fill, without that eager grasping after public honor and authority, attended with responsibilities which we may not be so well able to discharge, and with cares in which we are untried. These, from their engrossing nature, and from the public notice they involve, cannot often be discharged without much neglect of private affairs, and the sacrifice of much ease and comfort, amounting to an abandonment of the fatness, the sweetness, and the wine of life—of all that renders our existence really useful to others, and really happy to ourselves. Happiness is suitableness; and he who abandons the means of usefulness which have grown with his growth in the sphere in which he moves, for untried, and therefore probably unsuitable responsibilities and powers, is likely to pierce himself through with many sorrows, and forego all that has blessed his past existence. It is well to note, that the trees considered the promotion offered to them involved the abandonment of all that was proper to them, and that constituted their usefulness. In this age and country, men have not the offer of crowns; but in this age and country, more perhaps than in any other, there is an extensive craving after public honors and powers—political, municipal, ecclesiastical, commercial—which renders these considerations far from inappropriate. In the state, in the city, in the church, in the club, in the company, and even in the workshop and the school, there is a general seeking after the power and dominion involved in the idea of “reigning,” and which is justly open to the caution which this parable contains. There are, indeed, legitimate objects of the highest ambition, and of the most exalted aspirations. Crowns and kingdoms lie beneath the feet of him who pursues with steady pace his high career towards the city of the Great King, where he knows there is laid up for him a crown of glory that fadeth not away—a crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous judge, will bestow upon all that love his appearing.

Consider also the eagerness of the bramble to accept the honors which the nobler trees declined, and the arrogant pretensions which it connected with its acceptance of them. By this we may learn, as Jotham intended to teach, that they are men of an inferior order of capacity, usefulness, and thought, to whom these earthly distinctions are most precious, and by whom they are most earnestly coveted. A good man may accept honors and powers, which have occurred to him out of his high labors and eminent services. Were it otherwise, the power which man exercises over man, would be in the hands only of the worthless. But to seek the honors themselves, to make them the direct object of ambition and of thought, or even to accept them without the right which high services confer, is low, is mean, is brambleish. Now a bramble is not only one of the most useless of plants; but it is offensive by its thorns, so that the silly sheep who accept the shelter to which it invites them, escape not without leaving some of their fleece behind them. So also, from its very worthlessness, it is much used in the East for the light fuel which in such climates is alone required. Yet, as such, it may kindle a flame which may prostrate the very cedars of Lebanon. Hence it is not the highest of men, the lofty and the gifted, who crave after the dominion over their fellows, and invite them to put their trust in their shadow—but the low, the hurtful, and the unworthy—who take what they cannot use, and offer what they cannot give. The bramble Abimelech was the only one in the line of the Judges who attained to greatness without any public services; and yet he claimed higher honors and powers, in his mere unworthiness, than the greatest of those Judges ever exercised or would have accepted. There have been, and there are many such Abimelechs; and generally, in all their insatiate cravings after power, the arrogance of the pretension is proportioned to the scantiness of the desert.