Judges 1 Study Notes

1:1-2 After the death of Joshua links the book of Judges with the preceding account of the conquest of Canaan in the book of Joshua and sets the agenda for what follows. This is the story of the generations following Joshua’s death, who failed to continue the legacy of his faithfulness to the charge Moses gave him. God had commanded his people to destroy the Canaanites during their conquest or the Canaanites would certainly lead the Israelites astray into false worship (Dt 20:16-18). The subsequent story demonstrates the validity of that concern.

Unlike Moses, Joshua left no successor. So Israel inquired of the Lord, who was the commander-in-chief.

1:3 Judah and Simeon covenanted together to fight against the Canaanites, providing a positive example of how the tribes could work together to possess the land.

1:4-7 The victory at Bezek is a positive beginning that heightens all the more the tragedy of Israel’s subsequent failure. Yet the treatment of the leader of the Canaanites, Adoni-bezek, injects an ambiguous note into their triumph. The Israelites cut off his thumbs and big toes, emphasizing how dramatic a victory the Judahites and Simeonites had won with God’s help. Seventy kings could not defeat Adoni-bezek, but the Lord brought him down effortlessly, and even the defeated king recognized God’s hand at work. Yet according to the Lord’s command in Dt 7:1-2 to destroy completely the Canaanites and Perizzites, Adoni-bezek should have been put to death immediately. Instead, in adopting Adoni-bezek’s own strategy of punishment, the Israelites seem to have become exactly like the immoral Canaanites they were supposed to drive out. This sort of failure is a persistent problem throughout the book of Judges.

1:8 The Judahites captured and destroyed Jerusalem in accordance with the rules of holy war, but they did not occupy it at this point or, if they did, they were soon driven out again (v. 21; 1Ch 11:4-9).

1:9-11 Verse 9 introduces vv. 10-20 by designating the three regions in which those verses describe fighting. The fighting at Hebron and Debir were in the hill country. The Judean foothills are often called the Shephelah.

1:12-13 Othniel would later become the first of Israel’s judges (3:7-11). The story illustrates Othniel’s credentials for that position, both as a warrior and through his kinship to Caleb, Joshua’s faithful companion on the spying trip in Nm 13-14. Othniel, who was the younger brother or nephew of Caleb, captured Kiriath-sepher (Debir), and thereby gained the right to marry Caleb’s daughter, Achsah. See Jos 15:16-19.

1:14-15 Achsah was not only well-connected, she was a woman of faith and spirit. She and her husband had been given land in the Negev, the dry southern region of Judah, but they needed water for the land. She therefore sought and received springs from her father. Her request, and the faith that drove it, is reminiscent of the daughters of Zelophehad in Nm 27; they asked for an inheritance in the promised land even though it had not then been won from enemy hands.

1:16 The descendants of the Ke-nite were descended from Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses. They also traveled with the Judahites from Jericho (the City of Palms). Far from driving out the inhabitants of the land, they went to live among the people.

1:17-20 Initial success on the part of Judah and Simeon was followed by jarring failure. After a string of victories at Hormah . . . Gaza . . . Ashkelon, and Ekron, Judah took possession of the hill country because the Lord was with them. Yet they were unable to drive out the people living in the valley because they had iron chariots. Iron was a relatively new discovery, and the Canaanites had the technological edge. Yet the Lord would prove again and again more than equal to the task of defeating superior forces, even those equipped with chariots (chap. 4; Jos 17:18). Implicit in Judah’s failure to conquer the people of the valleys is the removal of the Lord’s blessing on their warfare. This stands in stark contrast to Caleb’s success at Hebron (see v. 1:10), where he defeated the sons of Anak who had so terrified his contemporaries in the days of Moses (Nm 13:33). See Jos 14:12-15.

1:21 Failure after failure is recorded in the subsequent verses. The city of Jerusalem was on the boundary between the territory of Judah and Benjamin; the campaign against it by Judah in v. 8 was only a short-lived success. The Benjaminites come first after Judah in the litany of failure, perhaps foreshadowing their negative role in the final chapters of the book.

1:22-26 The house of Joseph (the Ephraimites) had a mixed experience at Bethel. The similarities and differences to the assault on Jericho under Joshua are striking (Jos 2; 6). As with Jericho, spies were sent out to explore the city, where they found one of the inhabitants willing to help them, in return for the lives of himself and his family. The city was captured because the Lord was with them, but unlike Rahab, the man did not find Israel attractive so that he wanted to become a member of the covenant community. Instead, he left to recreate his pagan lifestyle in another country.

1:27-33 As the chapter unfolds, conquest is replaced by cohabitation. Manasseh failed to take possession of the villages in its territory. Even when the Manassites became stronger than the Canaanites, they failed to drive them out, instead using them as forced labor. The same approach was followed by Ephraim . . . Zebulun . . . Asher, and Naphtali. The universality of this failure is underscored by the use of the inclusive title Israel in v. 28.

1:34-35 The worst situation of all was that of the Danites, who were shut up in the hill country by the Amorites who were determined to stay in their cities. Apparently, the inhabitants of the land were more determined to stay there than God’s people were to obey the Lord’s command to drive them out.