Verse 49. - Set the hold on fire - thus literally fulfilling Jotham's curse in vers. 15 and 20. It is thought by many that those who thus perished miserably by suffocation and fire in the hold of the temple of Baal-berith had taken sanctuary there, not occupied it for the purposes of defence.

9:30-49 Abimelech intended to punish the Schechemites for slighting him now, but God punished them for their serving him formerly in the murder of Gideon's sons. When God uses men as instruments in his hand to do his work, he means one thing, and they another. That, which they hoped would have been for their welfare, proved a snare and a trap, as those will certainly find, who run to idols for shelter; such will prove a refuge of lies.And all the people likewise cut down every man his bough, and followed Abimelech,.... With their boughs on their shoulders, so that they were men that seemed to be as trees walking:

and put them to the hold, and set the hold on fire upon them; upon the men in it, or with them, the boughs of trees; it is probable the hold was made of wood, and so could the more easily be set on fire. Jarchi says it was a wood or forest, where they bent the trees, and divided them round about, and made a fence of them; but they would scarcely have left the tower for such a shelter:

so that all the men of the tower of Shechem died also; fire being put to the hold, and they burnt in it; the Vulgate Latin version adds, with fire and smoke; for they being boughs of trees just cut down, with which they set fire to the hold, they would not burn easily and clearly, but make a prodigious smoke, with which many might be suffocated, as others burnt with fire; and it is unaccountable that Josephus (o) should say that faggots of dry wood were taken, and with them fire set to the hold, when the text is so express for it that they were boughs of green trees just cut off:

about a thousand men and women; but the above historian makes them to be many more; he says the men were about 1500, and the rest a great multitude; this literally fulfilled Jotham's curse.

(o) Antiqu. l. 5. c. 7. sect. 4.