And the trees said to the fig tree, Come thou, and reign over us.
And the trees say to the fig, Come thou, reign over us.
Then the trees said to the fig tree, ‘Come and reign over us.’
And the trees said to the fig-tree, Come thou, reign over us.
Judges — The post-conquest slide into cyclical apostasy. Twelve judges delivering Israel from successive oppressors, a pattern repeating seven times, and an appendix whose violence diagnoses a nation with no king.
Rare words are the text's own signal of a deliberate thread — the fewer the occurrences, the more the places it appears belong together.
Voices3
And the trees said to the fig tree,.... Another useful and fruit bearing tree, and to which also good men are sometimes compared, see Son 2:13, come thou, and reign over us: which Jarchi applies to Deborah, but may be better applied to one of Gideon's sons, who, though they had not a personal offer of kingly government themselves, yet it was made to them through their father, and refused, as for himself, so for them; and had it been offered to them, they would have rejected it, as Jotham seems to intimate by this parable.
John Gill· Exposition of the Old Testament (1748-1763)reformed
But lest I should appear to some to be sophistical, and to conjecture these things from mere probabilities, and to babble, I will bring forward to you, O virgins, from the Old Testament, written prophecy from the book of Judges, to show that I speak the truth, where the future reign of chastity was already clearly foretold.…Now it is clear that these things are not said of trees growing out of the earth. Inanimate trees cannot be assembled in council to choose a king since they are firmly fixed to the earth by deep roots.
Methodius of Olympus· BANQUET OF THE TEN VIRGINS 10.2, 311patristic
Fig-tree - Gideon refused this honour, both for himself, and for his sons; and the sons of Gideon, whom Abimelech had slain, upon pretense of their affecting the kingdom, were as far from such thoughts as their father.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament, 1765evangelical
The verses this one reaches1
Therefore, the LORD, the God of Israel, declares: ‘I did indeed say that your house and the house of your father would walk before Me forever. But now the LORD declares: Far be it from Me! For I will honor those who honor Me, but those who despise Me will be disdained.
