Abimelech(s), Kings and Leadership

Sunday, July 5, 2026

The Rev. Megan Collins

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When Dave and I were 20 years old, we were hired to be the Youth Directors at a church, which meant we were a full three years older than some of the kids we were in charge of. It was basically putting bigger kids in charge of slightly smaller kids. We could see it was weird that we were in charge. We could barely be in charge of ourselves, and we were somehow trusted to take care of a group of teenagers. So we didn’t really feel like we were the leaders, not at first.

But then one day, we were driving home a middle school student after youth group. At first she was happily chatting from the back seat as we wound through the curvy roads that led to her house.Then she got very quiet . . . too quiet. We heard an unmistakable sound. She threw up, all over the backseat (of our six month old car). 

Dave pulled the car over, and we looked at each other, waiting for help to arrive, for someone to do something. 

It was then that we realized. . . there was no other grown up there to handle it.

So we gently helped her from the backseat, and started the process of cleaning up.  

Suddenly, we were it. The buck stopped with us. For better or worse, we were the leaders.

27 years later, I do like being a leader. Maybe you like being a leader too, being in control of the meeting, making decisions, deciding what to do next. I do like making a good strategic plan. But sometimes it’s also nice to have someone else there to step up, to let you be the passenger in the car for a while. Dave and I were able to go on the youth trip last week in Tennessee with our church youth group here at Maitland Pres. It was so fun - because we were there as volunteers. We were not in charge. Vanessa was in charge, and then Darryl. We were just there to help. So we got to tube on the river and hike in the forest and hang out with the best group of teenagers. But Vanessa was the leader. She had to carry the responsibility of devotions and safety and schedules and plans. (And if someone threw up, she would know what to do). 

Maybe there’s someone like that in your life, someone you can trust to take the wheel, a good human and a great leader. So you know you can take a step back, and relax. They’ve got it. But what do we do when the leaders that carry authority in our lives, in small ways or big ways, aren’t good? What do we do when their decisions aren’t good for us, when we don’t trust them, when they don’t inspire confidence?

Today we’ll look at two leaders in the Bible, who have the same name, but very different leadership approaches. We’re currently working our way through the whole Bible as a church, to examine and unpack it, and today we’ll pick back up in the story of Abraham. Abraham and his family are continuing on their journey of wandering and now they have gone to a place called Gerar.

I always appreciate when the Biblical text is eerily on point for what we need on a given day.

As we have moved through Genesis, the story of Hagar fell on Juneteenth.

Deconstructing the story of Sodom and Gomorroah fell during Pride month. 

And now on July 4th this weekend, the next story leads us into a contrast between two very different political leaders, who happen to have the same name. 

Genesis 20 says:

20:1b While residing in Gerar as an alien,² Abraham said of his wife Sarah, “She is my sister.” 

We’ve seen this move from Abraham before. Whenever they get to a new place, he gets scared that they will kill him to have her, since she is so beautiful, so he tells everyone she is his sister. 

And King Abimelech of Gerar sent and took Sarah. ³ But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night and said to him, “You are about to die because of the woman whom you have taken, for she is a married woman.” ⁴ Now Abimelech had not approached her, so he said, “Lord, will you destroy an innocent people? ⁵ Did he not himself say to me, ‘She is my sister’? And she herself said, ‘He is my brother.’ I did this in the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands.”

Now, Abimelech is not an Israelite, which is the identified people of God we have been following in our texts. But the narrator shows him to be a good and moral leader. He’s not perfect (he did take Sarah) but he doesn’t use his power to hurt her. He seems to have integrity. It’s clear here that righteousness then is not limited to a certain religious or national pedigree. The Bible refuses to let us assume here that just because someone belongs to the 'right' nation or the 'right' religion, that they are righteous. Abraham, the leader of the covenant people, is off base, and Abimelech, the outsider, is the one who does the right thing. 

 ⁶ Then God said to him in the dream, “Yes, I know that you did this in the integrity of your heart; furthermore, it was I who kept you from sinning against me. Therefore I did not let you touch her. 

So God affirms this goodness in Abimelech, and also points out that it is God really that has intervened to protect Sarah. Then Abimilech wakes up and calls in Abraham for a chat. 

⁹ Then Abimelech called Abraham and said to him, “What have you done to us? How have I sinned against you, that you have brought such great guilt on me and my kingdom? You have done things to me that ought not to be done.” ¹⁰ And Abimelech said to Abraham, “What were you thinking, that you did this thing?” ¹¹ Abraham said, “I did it because I thought, Surely there is no fear of God in this place, and they will kill me because of my wife. ¹² Besides, she is indeed my sister, the daughter of my father but not the daughter of my mother, and she became my wife. ¹³ And when God caused me to wander from my father’s house, I said to her, ‘This is the kindness you must do me: at every place to which we come, say of me, He is my brother.’ ”

This part does not make Abraham look any better. Not only did he offer Sarah up because he was afraid, but he defends it by saying he basically had no choice because he thought Gerar was such a bad place, and that he was only there because God caused him to wander from the safety of his father’s house, and that technically she is his sister, so he wasn’t really lying. 

The story goes on, Abimelech continues to take the high road, returns Sarah, gives Abraham and Sarh and their people a bunch of gifts, and makes a covenant with Abraham. 

Abimilech wasn’t perfect, but he feels like the kind of leader you could trust. He seems like one of those people you can relax a bit when they are in charge, because they have integrity. They will do the right thing. They have the best interest of the people under them in mind. 

As the story continues through the Old Testament, Israel will spend a lot of time trying to find a leader like Abimelech for themselves. They are exhausted. They are overwhelmed. They’ve been through a lot. And they just want someone they can trust to handle things. 

And then we meet Gideon.  In the book of Judges, chapter 8, it says

^{8: 22} Then the Israelites said to Gideon, “Rule over us, you and your son and your grandson also, for you have delivered us out of the hand of Midian.” 

The people ask Gideon to lead, but he replies . .  

²³ Gideon said to them, “I will not rule over you, and my son will not rule over you; the Lord will rule over you.

This probably made them want him to lead even more. A leader who is humble and trusts God and doesn’t really want to lead? That sounds perfect. 

Gideon never agrees to be king. But the people give him a lot of power anyway. It appears that with all this new power, his integrity begins to slip. Despite his protest at first, Gideon slowly starts doing king things, like taking a whole bunch of wives and even concubines. We see in Gideon how even leaders with the best intentions can end up being corrupted by power, making one compromise at a time, to their integrity. There’s a whole message to be made here about the compromises we make, as individuals and as a people. But Gideon’s story isn’t why we’re in Judges today. Let’s keep reading: 

^8:30 Now Gideon had seventy sons, his own offspring, for he had many wives. ³¹ His concubine who was in Shechem also bore him a son, and he named him Abimelech. ³² Then Gideon son of Joash died.

Before he dies, Gideon names his son . . . Abimelech. This is not the same Abimelech we met in Genesis a minute ago. This is a different man, in some really significant ways. But do you know what the name Abimelech means?

“My father is king.”

Gideon, who had said only the Lord should rule, clearly saw himself as king by the time he died. So now we have this other Abimelech, and we see quickly that while the first Abimelech in Genesis had integrity, and restraint in using his power, this Abimelech does not. 

Judges 9: 9 Now Abimelech son of Jerubbaal (that’s Gideon) went to Shechem to his mother’s kinsfolk and said to them and to the whole clan of his mother’s family, ² “Say in the hearing of all the lords of Shechem, ‘Which is better for you, that all seventy of the sons of Jerubbaal rule over you or that one rule over you?’ Remember also that I am your bone and your flesh.” 

Abimelech is the son of a concubine from Shechem. So he goes to his mother’s people and makes the case that he should be the new king, he is one of them after all, and they buy it . . . literally. They start giving him money, and not just any money, temple money. Abimelech’s kingship was bought by religion. Notice what argument wins them over - identity. That's the move every Abimelech makes, then and now: "he's one of us.” Their allegiance isn’t to God. It’s to one of their own. 

⁴ They gave him seventy pieces of silver out of the temple of Baal-berith with which Abimelech hired worthless and reckless fellows who followed him.

He uses the money to hire what Judges calls “worthless and reckless fellows” to follow him. Then his new entourage follows him back to his father’s house, with a horrific plan. 

⁵ He went to his father’s house at Ophrah and killed his brothers the sons of Jerubbaal, seventy men, on one stone, but Jotham, the youngest son of Jerubbaal, survived, for he hid himself. ⁶ Then all the lords of Shechem and all Beth-millo came together, and they went and made Abimelech king, by the oak of the pillar at Shechem.

²² Abimelech ruled over Israel three years. 

So Abimelech kills all 70 sons of his father Gideon, except for one, Jotham, who survives. Then he is made king. After this, there is a battle with some of the people of Shechem, which Abimelech wins. Then for no reason at all, completely unprovoked, he goes on to attack a town called Thebez. All of the people in that town run to hide on the roof of a tower, and Abimilech goes to burn it down. 

⁵³ But a certain woman threw an upper millstone on Abimelech’s head and crushed his skull.⁵⁴ Immediately he called to the young man who carried his armor and said to him, “Draw your sword and kill me, so people will not say about me, ‘A woman killed him.’ ” So the young man thrust him through, and he died. 

Even in death, Abimelech’s concern is his own reputation. He doesn’t want people to know it was a woman that stopped him. I love that the Biblical writers included this detail, as it shows us just who he is, and then the Scriptures even revisited it later in 2 Samuel 11, when it says 

²¹ Who killed Abimelech son of Jerubbaal?^[c] Did not a woman throw an upper millstone on him from the wall, so that he died at Thebez? 

Biblical pettiness is the best kind of pettiness. 

Abimelech is gone and the Israelites go back home. But he won’t be the last leader to cause problems. Not for the Israelites. And certainly not for us.

The first Abimilech we encountered in Genesis showed us integrity and restraint in leadership. 

The second Abimelech in Judges showed us a leader who used power and violence to control the people.

So then what do we do with the second Abimelechs in our lives? The good leaders and the bad?

First, if you are in leadership of any kind, examine your own heart. Like the good Abimelech of Genesis, listen to God’s leading to stay on the right path. Avoid the kind of compromises Gideon made as power corrupted him. All of us can look for these good leaders, and listen to them, encourage them. 

Second, when people like the second Abimilech have power, we can speak up, hold to account those who empower these leaders. Do you remember how one brother, Jotham, survived his brother's massacre? When they made Abimilech king, he gathers his courage, climbs up onto a hill, and calls to account the people helping his murderous brother gain power. He tells a fantastic parable about trees who want a king (read the whole passage in Judges 9) and ends with “have you acted honorably and in good faith?” (Then he runs away. But he still speaks up!)

You can also protect people from the whims of the powerful. When Abimilech attacked Thebez for no reason at all, someone thought to take people up onto a tower and out of reach. You can do your best to be a tower for the people in your lives to find refuge when they are at risk.

And, ultimately, you can trust God, because God is still working. While there will always be good leaders and bad leaders, God is the only true king. 

Remember what Hagar named God? The God who sees. 

God saw Hagar, and intervened. 

God saw Sarah when the first Abimelech had her, and intervened. 

And God saw what the second Abimelech had done in murdering his 70 brothers. 

(And the text goes on to say:   ⁵⁶ God repaid Abimelech for the crime he committed). 

We can’t always change the leaders in our lives. But we can trust the one true king is watching. 

When we zoom out to the greater Biblical story, the people of God will continue to anoint people as kings as we move through their story, and they continue to be disappointed with their behavior and corruption. 

But then Jesus comes. 

Jesus, who is only one actually worthy of the crown, before or since.

But he isn’t at all the king they expected. 

Over ten years ago, Nadia Bolz Weber wrote this: 

“He’s not a soldier, a cop, a secretary of state. He’s a savior.  . . . we don’t need any more Kings of vengeance, or Kings of worldly power or Kings of closing the border. We need a King in a cradle. We don’t need to throw up our fists, we need to fall on our knees. For that is what we do before a king. Fall on your knees before the one who loves without caution . . . before the one who submitted to the very worst that humans are capable of, and didn’t say “I’m going to get you back” but said “you are forgiven.” His kingdom is not of this world’s values. It is not a kingdom that guards its borders or arms its citizens.  Christ is our king because the human violence competition, the need to be right and the need for everyone else to be wrong and the belief that God favors us above all others and the use of that delusion to kill and alienate is seen by Jesus for what it is: so, so small. This is why we are in need not of a king but of a savior who draws all people to himself. A crown of thorns and a throne of a cross.”

We can trust the one true king. 

And for our part, we speak up, we encourage, we do what we can to protect, and we trust in God:

The King who sees the Abimelechs.

The King who sees us.

The king who refused power and embraced costly love. 

The king who came and will come again.