At the end of chapter Judges 8:1–35, when Gideon died, the Israelites turned again to the Baals and whored after them. This was a continuation of what they had already started while Gideon was alive, when they whored after an ephod that he had set up in Ophrah. So now we expect the Lord to send another foreign enemy to oppress his people. But he does not do so. Instead, the oppression now comes from within the covenant community itself.
1 Now Abimelech the son of Jerubbaal went to Shechem to his mother’s relatives and said to them and to the whole clan of his mother’s family,