Abimelech son of Gideon אבימלך בן גדעון

Gideon refused to rule: "I will not rule over you, nor shall my son; the LORD will rule over you." His son Abimelech decided otherwise.

He went to Shechem, to his mother's kin, and put a choice to the townsmen framed so that the answer was decided in advance: which is better, that seventy men rule over you, or one? They gave him seventy pieces of silver from the temple of Baal-berith; he hired "idle and reckless men" and killed seventy of his brothers on one stone. The youngest, Jotham, hid and survived.

Jotham stood on Mount Gerizim and shouted a parable — the first fable in the Tanakh. The trees went to anoint a king over themselves: they called the olive, the fig and the vine, and each refused, because each had work of its own. Then they called the bramble, and it answered: if in truth you make me king, come and take shelter in my shade; and if not, let fire come out of the bramble and devour the cedars of Lebanon.

Three years later that is exactly what happened. Shechem rebelled against Abimelech; he took the town and sowed it with salt, and burned those who had taken refuge in the tower of the temple. Then he went against Thebez, and there, storming the tower, "a woman dropped an upper millstone on Abimelech's head and cracked his skull." He had time to call his armour-bearer to finish him with a sword — "so that they will not say of me: a woman killed him."

They said it anyway: two centuries later Joab, explaining losses in an assault to David, cites this very case.

The years here are computed by adding up the terms given in the book of Judges itself, counting from the death of Joshua; they are not stated as such in the source.