Judges 9 opens with a pattern of declaration from Abimelech to his mother’s family:
"Remember also that I am your bone and your flesh." (Judges 9:2)
This is a deliberate echo of Adam’s words in Genesis 2:23 when he beholds the woman:
"This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man."
In Genesis, this is the poetry of union — the conscious and the subconscious coming together, the self recognising itself in its other half. It leads to the next verse, Genesis 2:24, where man “cleaves” to his wife and they become one flesh. But in Judges 9, the same phrase is twisted. Here, the appeal to kinship becomes a political move — a manipulation to gain power. What was once a statement of unity in love is now a tool of self-interest.
From Garden to Thorns
After seizing kingship through bloodshed, Abimelech’s reign is framed by Jotham’s parable of the trees (Judges 9:7–15). In it, the trees seek a king, approaching first the olive tree, then the fig tree, then the vine — all of which refuse to rule, content with their fruitfulness. Finally, they turn to the bramble (thornbush), which agrees but warns that if the trees do not submit, fire will come from it to consume them.
The imagery of trees immediately recalls Genesis 2 — particularly the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” In Neville Goddard’s symbolic reading, the “trees” represent states of consciousness. The olive, fig, and vine are higher, life-giving states that nourish. The bramble, however, is the barren, defensive state — the mind entangled in fear, pride, and scarcity. To choose the bramble as king is to enthrone the lowest nature of man, the “thorn” of self-interest that inevitably burns the garden.
The Inner Meaning
Abimelech’s story warns of the same danger present in the Garden: choosing the wrong ruler within. Just as Adam and Eve’s attention shifted from life to the mixed knowledge of “good and evil” — introducing division into unity — so Israel, in this parable, chooses a ruler that cannot produce fruit, only fire.
In the language of inner transformation, this is the moment you bind yourself not to your divine imagination (the fruitful tree) but to your reactive, defensive state (the bramble). Genesis 2:23–24 speaks of joining bone to bone, flesh to flesh — but the real marriage is always to a state. The question is: which one?
Will you wed your consciousness to the olive, the fig, or the vine — fruitful states of peace, abundance, and joy? Or will you be seduced by the bramble, a crown of thorns waiting to burn what it rules?