A woman ends Abimelech's violent rule

Thebez has a tower, and Abimelech tries the same fire

Abimelech goes to Thebez, camps against it, and takes it. There is a strong tower within the city. All the men and women, and all they of the city, flee there, shut it, and get them up to the top. Abimelech comes to the tower and fights against it, and draws near to the door to burn it with fire. He is repeating Shechem on another town.

A woman drops a millstone; he cannot control the report

A certain woman casts a piece of a millstone upon Abimelech's head, and all to breaks his skull, that is, crushes it. He calls hastily to the young man his armourbearer: Draw thy sword, and slay me, that men say not of me, A woman slew him. The young man thrusts him through, and he dies. When the men of Israel see that Abimelech is dead, they depart every man unto his place.

The narrator then states the theology: God rendered the wickedness of Abimelech, which he did unto his father in slaying his seventy brethren, and all the evil of the men of Shechem did God render upon their heads, and upon them came the curse of Jotham the son of Jerubbaal. The woman's millstone is the decisive defensive blow. The armourbearer's sword does not erase it. Abimelech's last wish is gendered shame; Scripture preserves exactly the report he wanted suppressed. Her anonymity does not make her agency small. The act is defense of a refuge, not a license for indiscriminate violence, and not a stereotype of either gender.