I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Judges 9-10.

There is a saying, “Blood is thinker than water” which people often use to explain, or justify, giving preferential treatment to relatives.  At some point after the death of Gideon the leaders of Shechem decided that backing the son of Gideon whose mother was from Shechem would lead to advantages for themselves.  Unfortunately, they did not think things through.  They supported Gideon’s son Abimelech to become king over them and others because he was related to them, even after he killed all but one of his brothers.  So, they thought he would favor them because they were related, yet he had just killed his brothers who were more closely related to him than they were.  I could go about this in many different ways, but the people of Shechem chose Abimelech as their leader on the basis of two things: he was Gideon’s son, and he was their relative.  Up until this point, Abimelech had shown no leadership traits.  He had not solved any problems for the people of Shechem.  He had no followers until the people of Shechem gave him money to hire some.  The end result was that Abimelech was a bad ruler and the people of Shechem soon rebelled against him, leading to the death of many of them.