The immediate effect upon the nation of this deliverance was greater than that of any other. Not only had the country quietness for 40 years (Judg. viii. 28), not only did Gideon’s Altar, and the Spring of Trembling, and the rock Oreb (or the _Raven’s Crag_), and the winepress of Zeeb remain standing monuments of this great day, when God _made like a wheel_[205], and drove over the uplands of Gilead _as stubble before the wind_ (Ps. lxxxiii. 13, 14), like clouds of chaff blown from the summer threshing-floors, the proud people which had said, _Let us take to ourselves the pastures of God in possession_ (Ps. lxxxiii. 12), but for the first time the Israelites offered hereditary royal dignity to the great conqueror. _Rule thou over us_, said they, _both thou, and thy son, and thy son’s sons also_. Gideon had the rare self-control to decline the flattering request. _I will not rule over you_, said he, _neither shall my son rule over you; Jehovah shall rule over you_. One request only and a strange one did he make of the grateful tribes, that they would give him the golden earrings and other ornaments they had taken from the conquered foe. Willingly into his cloak the people flung the ornaments, jewels, and chains from the camels’ necks to the weight of 1700 shekels, and with these Gideon made an ephod, and put it in his native Ophrah, and all _Israel went a whoring after it_, which thing became a snare unto Gideon and to his house. Though he declined the royal dignity, he was addicted to a royal failing. He multiplied wives and begat 70 sons, and after living to a good old age descended in peace to the tomb of his father Joash in Ophrah of the Abi-ezrites[206] (Judg. viii. 32). CHAPTER V. _ABIMELECH AND JEPHTHAH._ JUDG. IX.–XII. B.C. CIRC. 1249–1188. AFTER the death of Gideon, Jehovah, whose minister he had been for the deliverance of the people, was again forgotten by the Israelites. Forgetting Gideon, forgetting Him who had sent Gideon, they made Baal-Berith, _Baal of the Covenant_, their god, and set up his sanctuary even in Shechem, though hallowed by the memories of the patriarchs[207] and the solemn ratification of the Law[208]. Meanwhile Gideon’s 70 sons appear to have exercised authority over some portion of the country. One of them, whose name was ABIMELECH, the son of a slave a Canaanite native of Shechem, after consultation with his mother’s brethren and her relatives (Judg. ix. 1), suggested that in place of the divided authority of his numerous brothers, he, _their bone and their flesh_ (Judg. ix. 2), should be vested with the supreme authority. The spirit of clanship was strong. _He is our brother_, whispered the family to the Shechemites, who at length fell in with the scheme, and lent Abimelech seventy pieces of silver from the sanctuary of Baal-Berith.