Judges 3:1-6

1 Now these are the nations that the Lord left to test all those in Israel who had no experience of any war in Canaan

2 (it was only that successive generations of Israelites might know war, to teach those who had no experience of it before):

3 the five lords of the Philistines, and all the Canaanites, and the Sidonians, and the Hivites who lived on Mount Lebanon, from Mount Baal-hermon as far as Lebo-hamath.

4 They were for the testing of Israel, to know whether Israel would obey the commandments of the Lord, which he commanded their ancestors by Moses.

5 So the Israelites lived among the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites;

6 and they took their daughters as wives for themselves, and their own daughters they gave to their sons; and they worshiped their gods.

Judges 3:1-6 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO JUDGES 3

This chapter gives an account of the nations left in Canaan to prove Israel, and who became a snare unto them, Jud 3:1-7; and of the servitude of Israel under the king of Mesopotamia for their sins, from which they were delivered by Othniel, Jud 3:8-11; and of their subjection to the Moabites, from which they were freed by Ehud, who privately assassinated the king of Moab, and then made his escape, Jud 3:12-30; and of the destruction of a large number of Philistines by Shamgar, with an ox goad, Jud 3:31.