49. Each one of the men cut off a bundle as well and followed Abimelech. They piled them up against the side rooms and set fire to the side rooms above them. So all the people in the Tower of Shechem died too, about one thousand men and women.
50. Then Abimelech moved on to Thebez, set up camp against it, and captured it.
51. But there was a strong tower inside the city. All the men and women and all the city’s leaders had fled there, shut themselves inside, and climbed to the tower’s roof.
52. Abimelech came to the tower to storm it. But when he approached the tower’s entrance to set it on fire,
53. a woman dropped an upper millstone on Abimelech’s head and cracked his skull.
54. He quickly cried out to the servant who carried his armor, "Draw your sword and kill me. Don’t let it be said of me, ‘A woman killed him.’" So his servant stabbed him, and he died.
55. When the Israelites saw that Abimelech was dead, they all went home.
56. Thus God paid back Abimelech for the evil he had done to his father by killing his seventy brothers.
57. God also paid back the people of Shechem for their evil. The curse of Jotham, Jerubbaal’s son, had come upon them.