The Story of Jotham's Tree Tale

Judges 9:1-15

In school, Beth's teacher read to the class from Aesops Fables. The stories were nothing like Beth was used to hearing. They talked about animals working out problems together and pretty much never mentioned enormous massacres, punishments from God, or penises.
When she got home, Beth told her mother about the stories. "Those stories are all about intelligent animals and fun stuff like that. Why aren't there those kinds of stories in the Bible?" she asked her mother.
"But there are, Dear One," said Beth's mother. "Here, let me tell you one."
And this is the story she told:

One day Abimelech went to Shechem to visit his uncles and grandparents. When he got there, he said to his relatives, "Say, would you rather be ruled by the seventy sons of Jerubbaal or by just one guy? Don't forget that I'm related to you."
His relatives answered loud enough for everyone in town to hear and they said, "We'd like to follow you, Abimelech; you're our brother." Then they gave Abimelech seventy dollars to hire happy conceited people to follow him.
When he had his group all together, Abimelech went to his father's house in Ophrah and killed seventy people on the same rock. The only person he didn't kill was Jerubbaal's youngest son Jotham who had hidden.
All the guys in Shechem got together with the people in Millo and made Abimelech king. When they told Jotham about this, he went to the top of a mountain and shouted, "Listen, guys, so that God will listen to you. The trees decided to have a king. They asked the olive tree to be their king, but the olive tree said, 'Should I stop being fat just for a promotion?' So the trees asked the fig tree to be their king, but the fig tree said, 'Should I stop being sweet and making fruit just for a promotion?' After that, the trees went to a vine and asked it to be their king, but the vine said, 'Should I give up my wine which makes God and man happy just for a promotion?' Finally, all the trees went to a bramble and asked it to be king, and the bramble said, "If you really want to make me king then stand in my shadow, otherwise I'll spit out fire and burn all the cedars in Lebanon.'"

Beth thought about this for a moment. "All of the Aesop stories had morals to them," she said. "What's the moral of Jotham's story?"
"I think that the story has many morals," answered her mother. "For instance, it teaches us that a king can't do good things like be fat and be sweet and make good things. In order to be a leader, you have to put things like that aside."
"But what does all that have to do with Abimelech?" asked Beth.
"Jotham told the story to make the point that only a selfless person can be a ruler. Also, it teaches that the king -- or the government -- is there to protect you, just like the brambles' shadow protected the other trees from the sun. But if you don't let the government protect you in the way it wants to, it will see that you are destroyed."
That made everything clear. Beth smiled and hugged her mother. All her questions had been answered.