Judges 9:52

And Abimelech came unto the tower, and fought against it, and went hard unto the door of the tower to burn it with fire.

Abimelech was the son of Gideon's maid, who caused his brothers, Gideon's sons, to be slain in order to become ruler, and was chosen as ruler by the men of Shechem over Israel. The Shechem that he utterly destroyed was the very ancient stopping-point of Jacob on his return from Padan-aram to Canaan, which Jeroboam later rebuilt as the capital of his kingdom.

The verse comes after three years of his wicked, tyrannical reign, when the neighboring city at Thebez had joined Shechem in rebellion. He had already destroyed rebellious Shechem, killed its people, burned it to ashes, and sown the ground with salt. At Thebez he fought against the tower and pressed hard toward the entrance of the tower, having gained possession of the place and meaning to burn its people with its tower in the same way.

By approaching too near the tower door for his own safety as they were about to burn it, he exposed himself and was mortally wounded by a millstone hurled by a woman. He then had his armor-bearer kill him lest people say a woman had slain him, ending his tyranny. He had been permitted to execute God's vengeance upon Israel, but his coming hard to the tower door to set it on fire passed the limits of divine forbearance, so his career of crime was now to be cut short.

The act displays God's justice punishing both Abimelech and the Shechemites who had made him king, proving sin never goes unpunished and warning against the path of disobedience. The chapter's parable of Jotham teaches that choosing such a ruler is folly, that those doing valuable work for the Lord have no desire to rule over their brethren, and that ambition to be exalted over others shows a lack of qualification for rulership. The chapter's scene in which trees are represented as holding a council and talking is figurative, not an actual event.

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