ABIMELECH. - Proper name, which in Hebrew means: “the Father” or: “my father (divine name?) is king.” From the El-Amarna letters Abi-milki of Tyre is known (14th century B.C.). In the Bible the following are recorded:
1. ABIMELECH king of Gerar, who appears in the story of Abraham and Isaac. Having gone to Gerar, Abraham concealed that Sarah was his wife, calling her his sister (she was such only on the father’s side, cf. Gen. 20:12), so that A. was able to take her in good faith; but warned by a dream followed by an illness, he restored Sarah to her husband with protests of reparation and esteem (Gen. 20). Later, at Beersheba, after a dispute over a well, he concluded a solemn alliance with Abraham (Gen. 21:22-33).
In the story of Isaac there appears again a king of Gerar of the same name who, without having committed the abduction as in the previous case, reproaches Isaac for a similar concealment (Gen. 26:7-22), and later, again at Beersheba, after other controversies over wells, makes a covenant with Isaac (Gen. 26:28-31). Chronological reasons seem to exclude that this is one and the same person; A. may have been a common name in the ruling dynasty of Gerar. The critics of the Wellhausen school see in these two episodes a single event transmitted with confusion of names, in two redactions, the first in the Elohist document, the other in the Yahwist (duplicates). Against this assertion it suffices to observe that the static character of patriarchal civilization makes it plausible that circumstances, places, and persons recur; moreover, the theory of duplicates admits that the Yahwist document repeats itself, since the same document is attributed with the similar episode of Gen. 12:10-20 (cf. A. Bea, De Pentateucho, 2nd ed., Rome 1933, p. 81).
2. ABIMELECH, son of Gideon (Judg. 8:31-9:57). After his father’s death, with the help of his mother’s relatives dwelling in Shechem, he killed his 70 brothers, considered dangerous rivals, and had himself proclaimed king. He reigned in Shechem for three years, but after a rebellion stirred up by Jotham (v.), the only son of Gideon who had escaped the massacre, he cruelly repressed the Shechemites, led by Gaal, destroying the city and burning the lands. Soon afterward he was mortally wounded by a stone thrown by a woman during the siege of nearby Thebez, and he had himself killed by his armor-bearer. More than as a judge, he must be considered as the first to have attempted to organize a kingdom in Israel.