Judges 9:48
And Abimelech gat him up to mount Zalmon, he and all the people that were with him; and Abimelech took an axe in his hand, and cut down a bough from the trees, and took it, and laid it on his shoulder, and said unto the people that were with him, What ye have seen me do, make haste, and do as I have done.
Abimelech went up to Mount Zalmon with all his people, cut down a bough from the trees, laid it on his shoulder, and commanded those with him to make haste and do as they had seen him do, thus leading them by his own example. This act belongs to his attack that destroyed Shechem, for Abimelech was Gideon's son, who had his brothers killed in order to be made ruler of Israel by Shechem. In that destruction he destroyed about a thousand people who were in the tower of Shechem.
After destroying Shechem he attacked a neighboring city intending to burn the people in its tower as he had done at Shechem, but his career of violence ended when a woman mortally wounded him with a millstone and his armor-bearer killed him at his request. The surrounding account includes Jotham's parable of the trees, which exposes the folly of Shechem in choosing Abimelech as ruler. It teaches that those doing valuable work for the Lord do not seek to rule over fellow workers, and that ambition for exaltation is evidence of unfitness to rule.
The trees in that surrounding account are described as holding an election and council and making speeches, but this is figurative personification giving inanimate things the figure, sentiments, language and actions of rational beings, not an account of trees actually talking. As with the speaking trees, the dead in the parable of Dives and Lazarus are personified to speak and act concerning the facts of their respective cases as though they were alive, which does not prove that the dead are conscious living beings in death.