Charles Ellicott Commentary Judges 9:14

"Then said all the trees unto the bramble, Come thou, and reign over us." — Judges 9:14 (ASV)

To the bramble. —Despairing of their best, they avail themselves of the unscrupulous ambition of their worst. The bramble—atad—is rather the rhamnus, or buckthorn, which Dioscorides calls the Carthaginian atadin. There seems to be an echo of this fable in Aesop’s fable of the fox and the thorn, where the fox is dreadfully torn by taking hold of the thorn to save himself from a fall, and the thorn asks him what else he could expect.

Reign over us. —They seem to address the thorn in a less ceremonious imperative—not mâlekah, as to the olive, or mûlekî, as to the fig tree and vine, but a mere blunt melâk!