Jacob Chanikuzhy

The character Dracula is said to be fashioned after Vlad the Impaler, also known as Vlad Dracula. He was a ruler in Romania in the 15th century and is known as one of the most wicked rulers in history. One of his sadistic pleasures was to impale people. He would impale his enemies through the buttocks till the stick came out through the mouth.  There were other mad rulers who were engaged in such atrocities. Some of them caused the deaths of millions of people, as for example, Joseph Stalin of Russia who caused the rape of 15 lakhs of women and death of 2 crores of people during his dictatorship.
A mad monarch who was also the first to usurp the throne in the Bible is Abimelech, the son of Gideon (Judges 9). In fact, his father Gideon was not at all a king. It was Abimelech himself who claimed kingship for the first time in the history of Israel. May be the meaning of his name, “my father is king,” suggested him to stake a claim for kingship. He was the son of Gideon by a concubine in Schechem. Gideon had 70 sons. Although Gideon was a successful military leader, he refused kingship even when the people requested him to rule over them as a king. He said to them: “I will not rule over you, and my son will not rule over you, the Lord willrule over you” (Judges 8,23).
Respecting the decision of their father, the other children of Gideon refrained from making any claim for kingship. However, Abimelech approached the Shechemites and asked their support for his right to rule. When he secured their support the very first thing he did was to kill all his other brothers on a single stone. Only Jotham, the youngest one, escaped death.
When Abimelech captured power, Jotham appeared on Mt. Gerizim and narrated a parable. The parable was about the trees of the earth wanting to have a king and approaching olive tree, fig tree and vine with the request to become the king. All of them refused to become the king of trees. The reason they all highlighted was that they did not want to give up their precious fruits for the sake of becoming a king. Their answer implied that ruling over the other trees would make them incapable of producing their fruits further. Instead of a fruitless life, they preferred to bear their precious fruits all throughout their lives. In other words they favoured a life of service to a life of authority. It seems that they feared that wielding authority would spoil their capacity to serve others by their fruitfulness.
In the end, the trees approached the bramble, a thorny shrub, to become the king which the latter happily accepted. By portraying a thorny creeper as ascending the throne, the parable of Jotham unleashes a scathing criticism of monarchy. Monarchy is an unnecessary, and dangerous parasite, living a lazy, luxurious and useless life at the cost of others. In the parable, the fruit bearing trees like olive, fig and vine represent Gideon and his sons who were satisfied with their life of service and refrained from wielding any authority. The trees are the people of Israel. By making a bramble their king, they did a great disservice to Gideon and his family. Gideon had given them successful leadership ensuring their safety and prosperity. However, forgetting all the benefits they received from the family of Gideon, in a most ungrateful move, they raised to the throne Abimelech who was very cruel and antagonistic to the family of Gideon.
What if thistles and thorns rise to the thrones and persecute the righteous? As the story unfolds, later an evil spirit creates conflicts between Abimelech and Shechemites and the former slaughtering the latter. Eventually, Abimelech himself receives an ignominious death as a woman breaks his skull with a millstone. The kingly thorn was thus finally burnt to ashes.
There may be people who try to manipulate others to rise to the undeserving heights. Even if they receive support from the opportunists and appear successful in their machinations for a while, God is sure to bring their authority and power to naught.