Charles Ellicott Commentary Judges 9:4

"And they gave him threescore and ten [pieces] of silver out of the house of Baal-berith, wherewith Abimelech hired vain and light fellows, who followed him." — Judges 9:4 (ASV)

Pieces. —Rather, shekels, which is the word normally understood in similar phrases (Judges 8:26). “Neither the citizens of Shechem nor the ignobly-ambitious bastard understood what true monarchy was, and still less what it ought to be in the commonwealth of Jehovah” (Ewald, ii. 389).

Out of the house of Baal-berith. —Like most temples in ancient days (e.g., that of Venus on Mount Eryx, the Parthenon, and that of Jupiter Latiaris), this served at once as a sanctuary, a fortress, and a bank. Similarly, the treasures amassed at Delphi enabled the three Phocian brothers, Phayllus, Phalaekus, and Onomarchus, to support the whole burden of the sacred war (Diodorus Siculus xvi.30; compare to Thucydides i.121 and ii.13). (Compare also to 1 Kings 15:18.)

Vain and light persons. —These are exactly analogous to the doruphoroi —a bodyguard of spear-bearers, which an ambitious Greek always hired as the first step to setting up a tyranny (Diogenes Laertius 1.49). We find Jephthah (Judges 11:3), David (1 Samuel 22:2), Absalom (2 Samuel 15:1), Rezon (1 Kings 11:24), Adonijah (1 Kings 1:5), and Jeroboam (2 Chronicles 13:7) doing exactly the same thing. Who these “vain” persons were is best defined in 1 Samuel 22:2. They were like the condottieri, or free-lances. The word vain (rikîm) is from the same root as Raca; it means vauriens. The word for “light persons” (pochazîm) occurs in Genesis 49:4 (applied to Reuben) and Zephaniah 3:4. It is from a root which means to boil over.