Thebez

AI summary: Thebez matters because it is the final scene in the Abimelech narrative. The town resists him, a woman wounds him from the tower, and his death becomes a powerful reversal of his earlier brutality. The cross references present Thebez as a place of resistance, judgment, and ironic downfall.¹

Brightness, a place some 11 miles north-east of Shechem, on the road to Scythopolis, the modern Tabas. Abimelech led his army against this place, because of its participation in the conspiracy of the men of Shechem; but as he drew near to the strong tower to which its inhabitants had fled for safety, and was about to set fire to it, a woman cast a fragment of millstone at him, and “all to brake his skull” i.e., “altogether brake,” etc. His armourbearer thereupon “thrust him through, and he died” (Judg. 9:50-55). ³