// Workers AI · dad joke modeWhat did Jotham's fable tree say? Leaf me alone.

Jotham's fable display at the Rina Smilansky Garden, Rehovot

Jotham's fable (also Jotham's parable or the parable of the bramble; Hebrew: משל יותם, Mashal Yotam) is a fable in the Book of Judges (Judges 9:7–21), spoken by Jotham, the youngest son of Gideon. After Gideon's death, Jotham's half brother Abimelech killed Gideon's other sons and was made king by the people of Shechem. Jotham, the only survivor, told the fable from Mount Gerizim as a protest against the new king. It is often described as the earliest parable in the Bible.

Summary

In the fable, the trees set out to anoint a king. They first ask the olive, then the fig, then the vine, three plants of the Seven Species. Each refuses in almost the same words: it is already useful to others and will not give that up in order to "go to be promoted over the trees" (literally "to sway over the trees"). Finally the trees turn to the bramble (atad), which accepts. It tells them to take refuge in its shade, and warns that if they do not, fire will come out of the bramble and consume the cedars of Lebanon.

Jotham then applies the fable to his audience. If the people of Shechem acted in good faith toward Gideon's family when they crowned Abimelech, they should rejoice in him and he in them. If not, fire will come out of Abimelech and consume them, and fire will come out of them and consume Abimelech. Jotham then flees to Beer.

Structure

The fable falls into four parallel units: an invitation to the olive, the fig and the vine, each followed by a refusal phrased as a rhetorical question, and then the invitation to the bramble. The bramble's reply breaks the pattern. In place of a rhetorical question it gives two conditional clauses, and Graham Ogden argues that this break marks the bramble's answer as the climax of the fable. The same two conditions ("if in good faith... but if not...") shape Jotham's application in verses 16–20, where the fire image becomes a curse of mutual destruction between Abimelech and Shechem. The rest of the chapter shows the curse being fulfilled: Abimelech burns the stronghold of Shechem and is later killed at Thebez. Barnabas Lindars showed that the curse links the fable to the whole Abimelech narrative. Ogden also concludes that Jotham almost certainly borrowed an existing fable and adapted it.

Identification of the atad

Jotham likens Abimelech to the atad. Most traditional commentators identify it as a barren, thorny, useless shrub. Yehuda Elitzur noted that the phrase "to sway over the trees" suggests barren trees that make noise in the wind but have nothing behind it.

Ishtori Haparchi and others identified the atad with the Christ's thorn jujube. Some later researchers dropped this identification in favour of a different shrub. The plant called atad in Modern Hebrew is Lycium europaeum, a shrub with mostly edible fruit, which does not seem to fit the atad of the fable. Nogah Hareuveni, who studied the plants of the Bible and rabbinic literature, accepted Ishtori Haparchi's view and identified the biblical atad with the Christ's thorn jujube. He rejected Lycium because it does not catch fire easily, while the branches of the jujube burn quickly and brightly.

Several points support this identification. The fable speaks of trees, and the jujube is a tree. The Hareuvenis also pointed to the large atad at the threshing floor where Jacob's sons mourned him for seven days (Genesis 50:10), which fits the bramble's offer of shade. In the eastern parts of the Land of Israel, especially the eastern Lower Galilee where Gideon's town of Ophrah was located, the jujube is the most common tree, and shepherds and their flocks rested in its shade in the heat of the day. Its painful thorns and low economic value compared with the olive, fig and vine made it a fitting image for someone unfit to rule. The jujube also survives the summer thorn fires common in its habitat and sprouts again after the next rains, while a burnt cedar of Lebanon does not recover.

Order of the trees

Few scholars have discussed the order in which the trees are approached. Arnold Ehrlich held that the trees are ordered by the importance of their fruit. Meir Ish-Shalom suggested that the order follows the amount of shade and protection each tree gives. Shmuel Cohen argues that this only explains why the fig comes before the vine. In his view the order relates mainly to the trunk: the trunk stands for the government and the foliage for the people it carries, so a wider trunk projects stronger authority.

Interpretation

The fable has often been read as an ironic attack on kingship itself. The Encyclopaedia Judaica notes that the fable does not fit the story closely: the Shechemites did not offer the crown to anyone, and the murder of Gideon's sons is not mentioned in it. It suggests the fable may be an older etiology of how the useless bramble became a fire hazard. The same entry suggests the author may be punning on Jotham's name, since yatom means "orphan" in Hebrew.

Beyond its immediate setting, the fable has been read as a comment on government in general, where unworthy people often rise to power. In a democracy it can also be read the other way round, as criticism of worthy people who avoid politics and leave leadership to the unworthy. One reading has the new king turn at once on the cedars of Lebanon, the natural candidates for the throne, and burn them. On this view the cedars pay for their excessive modesty in joining the other trees instead of offering themselves as rulers. Others criticise the fruit trees for refusing to dirty their hands with politics.

Symbolism of the fruit trees

According to the rabbis and Rashi, the olive stands for the judge Othniel, the fig for Deborah and the vine for Gideon. According to Malbim, the fruit trees are Gideon's other sons murdered by Abimelech. Among them were wise men seeking the good, like olive shoots; rich men seeking the pleasant, like the fig; and statesmen seeking the useful, like the vine. None of them wanted the throne, and the common people went to the bramble, which had nothing good, pleasant or useful in it.

Commemoration

The Rina Smilansky Garden of Biblical Plants in Rehovot has a corner dedicated to Jotham's fable. A Jotham's fable garden was also planted in the orchard of the Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv, to support teaching the Bible as a living book in the spirit of the educator Baruch Ben-Yehuda.

See also

• Parables of Jesus

Further reading

• Frenkley, Helen; Hareuveni, Nogah (1984). Tree and shrub in our Biblical heritage. Kiryat Ono, Israel: Neot Kedumin. ISBN 965-233-011-6.

Further reading

• Janzen, David (2012). "Gideon's House as the ʾāṭād: A Proposal for Reading Jotham's Fable". Catholic Biblical Quarterly. 74 (3): 465–475.
• Schöpflin, Karin (2004). "Jotham's Speech and Fable as Prophetic Comment on Abimelech's Story: The Genesis of Judges 9". Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament. 18 (1): 3–22.
• Tatu, Silviu (2006). "Jotham's Fable and the Crux Interpretum in Judges IX". Vetus Testamentum. 56 (1): 105–124. doi:10.1163/156853306775465108.

External links

• Yosef Tzemudi, The structure and rhetoric of Jotham's fable, Daat (in Hebrew)
• Israel Rosenson, Abimelech: Jotham's fable, CET virtual library (in Hebrew)
• Judges 9, Shalom Hartman Institute (in Hebrew)
• Tzipi Livni, The olives who crown brambles, 929, 23 October 2015 (in Hebrew)