concubine, who lived at Shechem and is called his maid-servant in Jdg 9:18, and to this son he gave the name of Abimelech, i.e., king's father. את־שׁמו ויּשׂם is not the same as את־שׁמו קרא, to give a person a name, but signifies to add a name, or give a surname (see Neh 9:7, and Dan 5:12 in the Chaldee). It follows from this, that Abimelech received this name from Gideon as a cognomen answering to his character, and therefore not at the time of his birth, but when he grew up and manifested such qualities as led to the expectation that he would be a king's father.
Verse 32
Gideon died at a good old age (see Gen 15:15; Gen 25:8), and therefore also died a peaceful death (not so his sons; see Judg 9), and was buried in his father's grave at Ophrah (Jdg 6:11).
Jdg 8:33-35 form the introduction to the history of Gideon's sons.
Verse 33
After Gideon's death the Israelites fell once more into the Baal-worship which Gideon had rooted out of his father's city (Jdg 6:25.), and worshipped Baal-berith as their God. Baal-berith, the covenant Baal (equivalent to El-berith, the covenant god, Jdg 9:46), is not Baal as the god of covenants, but, according to Gen 14:13, Baal as a god in covenant, i.e., Baal with whom they had made a covenant, just as the Israelites had their faithful covenant God in Jehovah (see Movers, Phöniz. i. p. 171). The worship of Baal-berith, as performed at Shechem according to Jdg 9:46, was an imitation of the worship of Jehovah, an adulteration of that worship, in which Baal was put in the place of Jehovah (see Hengstenberg, Dissertations on the Pentateuch, vol. ii. p. 81).
Verses 34-35
In this relapse into the worship of Baal they not only forgot Jehovah, their Deliverer from all their foes, but also the benefits which they owed to Gideon, and showed no kindness to his house in return for all the good which he had shown to Israel. The expression Jerubbaal-Gideon is chosen by the historian here, not for the purely outward purpose of laying express emphasis upon the identity of Gideon and Jerubbaal (Bertheau), but to point to what Gideon, the Baal-fighter, had justly deserved from the people of Israel. Judgment upon the House of Gideon, or Abimelech's Sins and End - Judges 9
After the death of Gideon, Abimelech, his bastard son, opened a way for himself to reign as king over Israel, by murdering his brethren with the help of the Shechemites (Jdg 9:1-6). For this grievous wrong Jotham, the only one of Gideon's seventy sons who
