Judges 9:14

Jdg 9:14 Then said all the trees unto the bramble, Come thou, [and] reign over us.

Ver. 14. Then said all the trees unto the bramble.] Or, Thistle, or teazle; which is not a tree but a shrub, prickly, barren, base, abject, good-for-nothing but to stop gaps, or kindle a fire. Abimelech was a right bramble indeed, who grew in the base hedgerow of a concubine, and scratched and drew blood to purpose, when once he had scrambled up to be king of Israel.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Jdg 9:14-15. Then said all the trees unto the bramble, &c. — Or thorn, fitly representing Abimelech, the son of a concubine, and a person of small use and great cruelty. If in truth ye anoint me king — If you deal truly and justly in making me king. Then trust — Then you may expect protection under my government. Devour the cedars — Instead of protection, you shall receive destruction by me; especially you cedars, that is, nobles, such as the house of Millo, who have been most forward in this work. By this fable Jotham signified to the Shechemites that the most worthy men in Israel, figured by the olive, the fig-tree, and the vine, which bear the most useful and excellent fruits, had not aimed at kingly dominion over them; and that his father Gideon had even refused it, when offered to him. By the bramble, the most worthless of shrubs, accepting the offer of the trees to be their king, and calling to them to put their trust in its shadow, though by its nature it could afford no shadow or protection to them, he shows what a worthless choice they had made. The speech of the bramble represents how foolish Abimelech was, in imagining he should be able to maintain the authority of a king, as he could by no means, any more than the bramble, afford the shade or protection he had promised: and the threat of the bramble seems to indicate the cruelty of Abimelech’s temper, that he would destroy the Shechemites, if he found them unfaithful.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Or, thistle, or brier.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

Verse 14. Then said all the trees unto the bramble] The word אטד atad, which we translate bramble, is supposed to mean the rhamnus, which is the largest of thorns, producing dreadful spikes, similar to darts. See Theodoret on Ps 58:10.

There is much of the moral of this fable contained in the different kinds of trees mentioned.

1. The olive; the most profitable tree to its owner, having few equals either for food or medicine.

2. The fig tree; one of the most fruitful of trees, and yielding one of the most delicious fruits, and superior to all others for sweetness.

3. The vine, which alone yields a liquor that, when properly prepared, and taken in strict moderation, is friendly both to the body and mind of man, having a most direct tendency to invigorate both.

4. The bramble or thorn, which, however useful as a hedge, is dangerous to come near; and is here the emblem of an impious, cruel, and oppressive king.

As the olive, fig, and vine, are said in this fable to refuse the royalty, because in consequence, they intimate, they should lose their own privileges, we learn that to be invested with power for the public good can be no privilege to the sovereign. If he discharge the office faithfully, it will plant his pillow with thorns, fill his soul with anxious cares, rob him of rest and quiet, and, in a word, will be to him a source of distress and misery. All this is represented here under the emblem of the trees losing their fatness, their sweetness and good fruits, and their cheering influence. In short, we see from this most sensible fable that the beneficent, benevolent, and highly illuminated mind, is ever averse from the love of power; and that those who do seek it are the thoughtless, the vain, the ambitious, and those who wish for power merely for the purpose of self-gratification; persons who have neither the disposition nor the knowledge to use power for the advantage of the community; and who, while they boast great things, and make great pretensions and promises, are the tyrants of the people, and often through their ambition, like the bramble in the fable kindle a flame of foreign or domestic war, in which their subjects are consumed.

The sleepless nights and corroding cares of sovereignty, are most forcibly described by a poet of our own, whose equal in describing the inward workings of the human heart, in all varieties of character and circumstances, has never appeared either in ancient or modern times. Hear what he puts in the mouth of two of his care-worn kings: -

"How many thousand of my poorest subjects

Are at this hour asleep? - Sleep, gentle sleep,

Nature's soft nurse! how have I frighted thee,

That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down,

And steep my senses in forgetfulness?

Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs,

Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee,

And hush'd with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber

Than in the perfumed chambers of the great,

Under the canopies of costly state,

And lull'd with sounds of sweetest melody?

O thou dull god! why liest thou with the vile

In loathsome beds; and leav'st the kingly couch

A watch-case, or a common 'larum bell?

Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast

Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains

In cradle of the rude imperious surge;

And in the visitation of the winds,

Who take the ruffian billows by the top,

Curling their monstrous heads and hanging them,

With deafening clamours, in the slippery clouds,

That, with the hurly, death itself awakes?

Canst thou, O partial sleep! give thy repose

To the wet sea-boy, in an hour so rude;

And, in the calmest and most stillest night,

With all appliances and means to boot,

Deny it to a king? Then, happy low, lie down!

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown."____

"O hard condition! twin-born with greatness,

Subjected to the breath of every fool,

Whose sense no more can feel but his own wringing!

What infinite heart's ease must kings neglect,

That private men enjoy!

And what have kings, that privates have not too,

Save ceremony, save general ceremony?"____

"'Tis not the balm, the sceptre, and the ball,

The sword, the mace, the crown imperial,

The intertissued robe of gold and pearl,

The farced title running 'fore the king,

The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp

That beats upon the high shore of this world,

No, not all these, thrice gorgeous ceremony,

Not all these, laid in bed majestical,

Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave."

SHAKESPEARE

This is precisely the sentiment expressed in the denial of the olive, fig tree, and vine.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

(14) Unto the bramble.—Despairing of their best, they avail themselves of the unscrupulous ambition of their worst. The bramble—atad—is rather the rhamnus, or buckthorn, which Dioscorides calls the Cartha ginian atadin. There seems to be an echo of this fable in Æsop’s fable of the fox and the thorn, where the fox is dreadfully rent by taking hold of the thorn to save himself from a fall, and the thorn asks him what else he could expect.

Reign over us.—They seem to address the thorn in a less ceremonious imperative—not mâlekah, as to the olive, or mûlekî, as to the fig-tree and vine, but a mere blunt melâk!

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

14. the bramble] LXX, Vulgate rhamnus, the common, worthless thornbush, the very opposite of the noble trees just mentioned.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Then said all the trees unto the bramble,.... Perceiving they could not prevail upon any of the useful and fruitful trees to take the government of them, they unite in a request to a bramble, scarce to be called a tree, and however a very barren and fruitless one, yea, hurtful and distressing:

come thou, and reign over us; this respects Abimelech, and describes him as a mean person, the son of a concubine, as having no goodness in him, not any good qualifications to recommend him to government, but all the reverse, cruel, tyrannical, and oppressive; and this exposes the folly of the Shechemites, and their eagerness to have a king at any rate, though ever so mean and despicable, useless and pernicious.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Bramble. Septuagint rhamnos, "the white, or hawthorn." Some suppose that atad means "a wild rose, (Vatable) thistle," &c. (Calmet) --- It is here put for any base and ambitious man. (Worthington)

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

The bramble, or thorn; a mean, and barren, and hurtful tree, fitly representing Abimelech, the son of a concubine, and a person of small use, and great cruelty.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

14. All the trees — Not one of all the trees was willing to be king, but all were willing that the bramble should rule over them — a stinging reflection on the Shechemites. {We understand Gideon and his sons, under the refusal of royalty, (Jdg_8:23,) to be represented by the olive and the vine, and Abimelech by the bramble. The bramble does not refuse to be king. Jotham sarcastically makes the bramble invite them to come under his shade, as an image of the felicity? of the Shechemites if they have done well in their choice. But if, as he believes, they have done wickedly, their bramble will prove a torch to burn their very cedars of Lebanon, the tallest of the Shechemite nobility.}

The bramble — The word אשׂד, atad, occurs elsewhere only in Psa_58:9, where it is rendered thorns, and Gen_50:10, where it is rendered as a proper name. “It is generally thought to denote the southern buckthorn, a brier bush indigenous in Egypt and Syria, shooting up from the root in many branches, (ten to fifteen feet high,) armed with spines, and bearing leaves resembling those of the olive, but light coloured and more slender, with little whitish blossoms that eventually produce small, black, bitter berries. The Arabs still call it atad. Rauwolf found it growing at Jerusalem.” — M’Clintock and Strong’s Cyclopaedia. From this same bush it is supposed the Saviour’s crown of thorns was made. Compare note on Mat_27:29.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The bramble. A prickly shrub; in Greek ramnov , Rhamnus, "the southern buckthorn" (Gesenins). The same plant as is mentioned in Psa_58:9 (thorns, A.V) as used to make fires with (see note to ver. 7).

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Bramble - Or, thorn, fitly representing Abimelech, the son of a concubine, and a person of small use, and great cruelty.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

The thornbush. "epine" in old French.

Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.