Abimelech (also spelled Abimelek or Avimelech; Hebrew : אֲבִימֶלֶךְ / אֲבִימָלֶךְ, Modern ʼAvīméleḵ / ʼAvīmáleḵ Tiberian ʼAḇīmeleḵ / ʼAḇīmāleḵ, "my father is a king"/"my father reigns") was the generic name given to all Philistine kings in the Hebrew Bible from the time of Abraham through King David. [1] In the Book of Judges, Abimelech, son of Gideon, [2] of the Tribe of Manasseh, is proclaimed king of Shechem after the death of his father. [3]
The name or title Abimelech is formed from Hebrew words for "father" and "king," and may be interpreted in a variety of ways, including "Father-King", "My father is king," or "Father of a king." [4] In the Pentateuch, it is used as a title for kings in the land of Canaan. [5]
Abimelech can be translated in Arabic as well into "My father is king", "My father is owner" or "Father of a king," where Abi (Arabic : أبي) means father or my father while malek (Arabic : ملك) means king or mālek (Arabic : مالك) for owner.
At the time of the Amarna tablets (mid-14th century BC), there was an Egyptian governor of Tyre similarly named Abimilki, who is sometimes speculated to be connected with one or more of the biblical Abimelechs.[ citation needed ]
Abimelech was most prominently the name of a polytheistic [6] [7] king of Gerar who is mentioned in two of the three wife–sister narratives in the Book of Genesis, in connection with both Abraham [8] and Isaac. [9]
King Abimelech of Gerar also appears in an extra-biblical tradition recounted in texts such as the Arabic Apocalypse of Peter , the Cave of Treasures and the Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan , as one of twelve regional kings in Abraham's time said to have built the city of Jerusalem for Melchizedek.
The Book of Judges mentions Abimelech, son of judge Gideon (also known as Jerubbaal). According to the biblical narrative, Abimelech was an extremely conniving and evil person. He persuaded his mother's brothers to encourage the people of Shechem to back him in a plot to overthrow his family rule and make him sole ruler.
After slaying all but one of his seventy brothers, Abimelech was crowned king. The brother who escaped, Jotham youngest son of Jerrubaal, made a pronouncement against Abimelech and those who had crowned him. The curse was that if they had not dealt righteously with the family of Jerrubaal, then fire would come against Abimelech from the people of Shechem and fire would come out of Abimelech against the people who had backed him in this bloody coup.
After Abimelech ruled for three years, the pronouncement came through. The people of Shechem set robbers to lie in wait of any goods or money headed to Abimelech and steal everything. Then Gaal Son of Ebed went to Shechem and drunkenly bragged that he would remove Abimelech from the throne. Zebul, ruler of Shechem, sent word to Abimelech along with a battle strategy. Once Zebul taunted Gaal into fighting Abimelech, he shut Gaal and his brethren out of the city.
Abimelech then slew the field workers that came out of the city of Shechem the next day. When he heard that the people of Shechem had locked themselves in a strong tower, he and his men set fire to it, killing about a thousand men and women.
After this, Abimelech went to Thebez and camped against it. When he went close to the tower in Thebez to set it on fire, a woman dropped an upper millstone on Abimelech's head. He did not want to be known as having been killed by a woman, so he asked his armour bearer to run him through with a sword. His place of death is cited as being Thebez. [10]
Avimelekh (Russian : Авимеле́х) is a Russian male first name derived from Abimelech. [11] It was included into various, often handwritten, church calendars throughout the 17th–19th centuries, but was omitted from the official Synodal Menologium at the end of the 19th century. [12]
Apart from the king (or kings) of Gerar, the Bible also records this name for:
Other literary references include:
The Book of Judges is the seventh book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. In the narrative of the Hebrew Bible, it covers the time between the conquest described in the Book of Joshua and the establishment of a kingdom in the Books of Samuel, during which biblical judges served as temporary leaders.
Judaism considers some names of God so holy that, once written, they should not be erased: יהוה, אֲדֹנָי (Adonai), אֵל, אֱלֹהִים, אֵל שַׁדַּי, שַׁדַּי, יְהֹוָ֥ה צְבָאֽוֹת and צְבָאֽוֹת ; some also include I Am that I Am. Early authorities considered other Hebrew names mere epithets or descriptions of God, and wrote that they and names in other languages may be written and erased freely. Some moderns advise special care even in these cases, and many Orthodox Jews have adopted the chumras of writing "G-d" instead of "God" in English or saying Ṭēt-Vav instead of Yōd-Hē for the number fifteen or Ṭēt-Zayin instead of Yōd-Vav for the Hebrew number sixteen.
Penuel is a place described in the Hebrew Bible as being not far from Succoth, on the east of the Jordan River and south of the river Jabbok in present-day Jordan.
Gideon also named Jerubbaal and Jerubbesheth, was a military leader, judge and prophet whose calling and victory over the Midianites are recounted in Judges 6–8 of the Book of Judges in the Hebrew Bible.
Sarah is a biblical matriarch, prophetess and major figure in Abrahamic religions. While different Abrahamic faiths portray her differently, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all depict her character similarly, as that of a pious woman, renowned for her hospitality and beauty, the wife and half-sister of Abraham, and the mother of Isaac. Sarah has her feast day on 1 September in the Catholic Church, 19 August in the Coptic Orthodox Church, 20 January in the LCMS, and 12 and 20 December in the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Shechem, also spelled Sichem, was an ancient city in the southern Levant. Mentioned as a Canaanite city in the Amarna Letters, it later appears in the Hebrew Bible as the first capital of the Kingdom of Israel following the split of the United Monarchy. According to Joshua 21:20–21, it was located in the tribal territorial allotment of the tribe of Ephraim. Shechem declined after the fall of the northern Kingdom of Israel. The city later regained its importance as a prominent Samaritan center during the Hellenistic period.
Jotham or Yotam was the youngest of Gideon's seventy sons. He escaped when the rest were put to death by the order of his half-brother Abimelech.
In the Book of Genesis, Dinah was the seventh child and only daughter of Leah and Jacob. The episode of her violation by Shechem, son of a Canaanite or Hivite prince, and the subsequent vengeance of her brothers Simeon and Levi, commonly referred to as the rape of Dinah, is told in Genesis 34.
Abimelech or Abimelek was the king of Shechem and a son of biblical judge Gideon. His name can best be interpreted as "my father is king", claiming the inherited right to rule. He is introduced in Judges 8:31 as the son of Gideon and his Shechemite concubine, and the biblical account of his reign is described in chapter nine of the Book of Judges. According to the Bible, he was an unprincipled and ambitious ruler who often engaged in war against his own subjects.
Gerar was a Philistine town and district in what is today south central Israel, mentioned in the Book of Genesis and in the Second Book of Chronicles of the Hebrew Bible.
Toledot, Toldot, Toldos, or Toldoth is the sixth weekly Torah portion in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading. The parashah tells of the conflict between Jacob and Esau, Isaac's passing off his wife Rebekah as his sister, and Isaac's blessing of his sons.
In biblical studies, the term wife–sister narratives in Genesis refers to three strikingly similar stories in chapters 12, 20, and 26 of the Book of Genesis. At the core of each is the story of a biblical patriarch who has come to be in the land of a powerful foreign overlord who misidentifies the Patriarch's wife as the Patriarch's sister, and consequently attempts to wed her himself. The overlord later finds out his error. Two of the three stories are similar in many other details, including the ruler's name, Abimelech.
Gaal (Hebrew:גַּעַל) was a minor 12th century BCE biblical character, introduced in the 9th chapter of Judges in the Hebrew Bible as the son of Ebed or Eved, or the son of a slave. His story is told in Judges 9:26–41.
Arumah a biblical toponym mentioned in the Book of Judges (9:41): "Then Abimelek stayed in Arumah, and Zebul drove Gaal and his clan out of Shechem." The reference is in the context of story describing a local revolt against Abimelech, the king of Shechem by Gaal the son of Ebed.
Judges 6 is the sixth chapter of the Book of Judges in the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible. According to Jewish tradition the book was attributed to the prophet Samuel, but modern scholars view it as part of the Deuteronomistic History, which spans in the books of Deuteronomy to 2 Kings, attributed to nationalistic and devotedly Yahwistic writers during the time of the reformer Judean king Josiah in 7th century BCE. This chapter records the activities of judge Gideon, belonging to a section comprising Judges 6 to 9 and a bigger section of Judges 6:1 to 16:31.
Judges 7 is the seventh chapter of the Book of Judges in the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible. According to Jewish tradition the book was attributed to the prophet Samuel, but modern scholars view it as part of the Deuteronomistic History, which spans in the books of Deuteronomy to 2 Kings, attributed to nationalistic and devotedly Yahwistic writers during the time of the reformer Judean king Josiah in 7th century BCE. This chapter records the activities of judge Gideon, belonging to a section comprising Judges 6 to 9 and a bigger section of Judges 6:1 to 16:31.
Judges 8 is the eighth chapter of the Book of Judges in the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible. According to Jewish tradition the book was attributed to the prophet Samuel, but modern scholars view it as part of the Deuteronomistic History, which spans the books of Deuteronomy to 2 Kings, attributed to nationalistic and devotedly Yahwistic writers during the time of the reformer Judean king Josiah in 7th century BCE. This chapter records the activities of judge Gideon, belonging to a section comprising Judges 6 to 9 and a bigger section of Judges 6:1 to 16:31.
Judges 9 is the ninth chapter of the Book of Judges in the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible. According to Jewish tradition the book was attributed to the prophet Samuel, but modern scholars view it as part of the Deuteronomistic History, which spans the books of Deuteronomy to 2 Kings, attributed to nationalistic and devotedly Yahwistic writers during the time of the reformer Judean king Josiah in 7th century BCE. This chapter records the activities of judge Gideon's son, Abimelech. belonging to a section comprising Judges 6 to 9 and a bigger section of Judges 6:1 to 16:31.
War in the Hebrew Bible concerns any military engagement narrated or discussed in the Hebrew Bible, also known as the Tanakh or Old Testament of the Bible. Texts about war in the Hebrew Bible are part of the broader topic of The Bible and violence. They cover a wide range of topics from detailed battle reports including weapons and tactics used, numbers of combatants involved, and casualties experienced, to discussions of motives and justifications for war, the sacred and secular aspects of war, descriptions and considerations of what in modern times would be considered war crimes such as genocide or wartime sexual violence, and reflections on wars that have happened, or predictions, visions or imaginations of wars that are yet to come.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain : Easton, Matthew George (1897). "Abimelech". Easton's Bible Dictionary (New and revised ed.). T. Nelson and Sons.
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