Judges 1

Today’s Passage: Judges 1

Joshua has died, and the book of Judges opens by looking back at the unfinished work he left behind. The land was promised and largely won, but pockets of Canaanites still held their towns, and now the tribes must go up one by one and take what God had given. The chapter begins bright. Judah asks the LORD who should lead, receives the answer, and wins victory after victory, taking Bezek, Jerusalem, Hebron, and Debir, with the small, warm story of Caleb’s daughter Acsah asking for springs of water folded into the middle of it. Then, halfway through, the tone quietly changes. A refrain begins that will haunt the rest of the book. Tribe after tribe “did not drive out” the people they were sent to remove. Benjamin, Manasseh, Ephraim, Zebulun, Asher, Naphtali, Dan: each one leaves Canaanites living in the land, some pressed into forced labor, none fully cleared. What began in obedience trails off into compromise, and the seam between the two is where the whole book’s long slide begins.

As you read, hold this: Partial obedience leaves standing the very thing God told His people to remove, and what is tolerated in the land today will not stay quiet tomorrow.

Judges 1:1–2 (BSB)

¹ After the death of Joshua, the Israelites inquired of the LORD, “Who will be the first to go up and fight for us against the Canaanites?”

² “Judah shall go up,” answered the LORD. “Indeed, I have delivered the land into their hands.”

The book could not open more hopefully. Joshua is gone, and the very first thing the people do is turn to the LORD and ask Him to lead, not presuming to choose their own way forward but inquiring, waiting, listening. And God answers plainly and generously. Judah shall go up, and notice the tense of the promise: I have delivered the land into their hands, already, as good as done. The victory is spoken of as finished before a single sword is drawn, because it rests on God’s word and not on Israel’s strength. This is exactly how the walk of faith is meant to begin, with a question aimed heavenward and a promise received. Hold that brightness in mind, because the chapter will slowly dim, and the distance it travels is the whole point.

Judges 1:3–7 (BSB)

³ Then the men of Judah said to their brothers the Simeonites, “Come up with us to our allotted territory, and let us fight against the Canaanites. And we likewise will go with you to your territory.” So the Simeonites went with them.

⁴ When Judah attacked, the LORD delivered the Canaanites and Perizzites into their hands, and they struck down ten thousand men at Bezek.

⁵ And there they found Adoni-bezek and fought against him, striking down the Canaanites and Perizzites.

⁶ As Adoni-bezek fled, they pursued him, seized him, and cut off his thumbs and big toes.

⁷ Then Adoni-bezek said, “Seventy kings with their thumbs and big toes cut off have gathered the scraps under my table. As I have done to them, so God has repaid me.” And they brought him to Jerusalem, where he died.

Judah does not go alone. It calls its brother tribe Simeon to come along, a small picture of the way God’s people are meant to fight side by side rather than each in isolation, and God honors the obedience: He delivers the enemy into their hands just as He said. Then the story pauses over one defeated king. Adoni-bezek had spent his reign maiming other kings, cutting off the thumbs that grip a sword and the big toes that steady a man’s stride, and reducing seventy of them to beggars scrabbling under his table. Now the same is done to him, and his own mouth pronounces the verdict: as I have done to them, so God has repaid me. Even a pagan tyrant can see, in the wreck of his own cruelty, that there is a God who weighs what men do and gives it back to them. The chapter’s first note about God is that He is just.

Judges 1:8–10 (BSB)

⁸ Then the men of Judah fought against Jerusalem and captured it. They put the city to the sword and set it on fire.

⁹ Afterward, the men of Judah marched down to fight against the Canaanites living in the hill country, in the Negev, and in the foothills.

¹⁰ Judah also marched against the Canaanites who were living in Hebron (formerly known as Kiriath-arba), and they struck down Sheshai, Ahiman, and Talmai.

The momentum keeps building. Judah takes Jerusalem, then sweeps through the hill country, the dry southern Negev, and the western foothills, pressing the campaign into every kind of terrain. At Hebron they strike down Sheshai, Ahiman, and Talmai, three names the older readers of Israel would have recognized with a shiver, for these were descendants of the giant Anakites whose size had terrified the spies a generation earlier and talked a whole nation out of the land. Now they fall. What once looked impossible falls to a people walking in step with God’s promise. Everything in these opening verses says the same thing: when Israel goes up trusting the word that the land is already given, the land is given.

Judges 1:11–15 (BSB)

¹¹ From there they marched against the inhabitants of Debir (formerly known as Kiriath-sepher).

¹² And Caleb said, “To the man who strikes down Kiriath-sepher and captures it, I will give my daughter Acsah in marriage.”

¹³ So Othniel son of Caleb’s younger brother Kenaz captured the city, and Caleb gave his daughter Acsah to him in marriage.

¹⁴ One day Acsah came to Othniel and urged him to ask her father for a field. When she got off her donkey, Caleb asked her, “What do you desire?”

¹⁵ “Give me a blessing,” she answered. “Since you have given me land in the Negev, give me springs of water as well.” So Caleb gave her both the upper and lower springs.

Into the middle of the war comes a quiet family scene, and it is worth slowing down for. Old Caleb, the man who forty-five years earlier had trusted God when everyone else quailed, offers his daughter in marriage to whoever will take Kiriath-sepher, and it is his nephew Othniel who steps up, the same Othniel who will become the first of the judges in the next chapter. Then Acsah does a wise and daring thing. She has been given land in the parched Negev, but land without water is land that cannot live, so she comes to her father and asks for springs as well, and Caleb gives her not one source but two, the upper and the lower. She understood that an inheritance is only as good as what makes it fruitful, and she was bold enough to ask her father for the fullness of the gift. This tender scene is the last unshadowed thing in the chapter. Right after it, the refrain of failure begins.

Judges 1:16–18 (BSB)

¹⁶ Now the descendants of Moses’ father-in-law, the Kenite, went up with the men of Judah from the City of Palms to the Wilderness of Judah in the Negev near Arad. They went to live among the people.

¹⁷ Then the men of Judah went with their brothers the Simeonites, attacked the Canaanites living in Zephath, and devoted the city to destruction. So it was called Hormah.

¹⁸ And Judah also captured Gaza, Ashkelon, and Ekron—each with its territory.

Two more bright notes before the turn. The Kenites, the family of Moses’ father-in-law, cast their lot in with Israel and go up to settle among the people of God, an outsider clan choosing to belong to the covenant nation. And Judah, again alongside Simeon, deals with the town of Zephath in the fullest possible way: they devote (חָרַם) charam, pronounced khah-RAHM. Strong's H2763, to devote wholly to God, often to destruction under judgment. To place something under the charam was to set it apart irrevocably for God, most often by devoting it wholly to destruction, keeping back nothing for common use. It is a severe word, and it belongs to a unique moment in Israel’s history, but the chapter uses it here for a reason. At Zephath, Judah does the whole thing, all the way to the end, and the town’s new name Hormah carries the same root, a monument to obedience completed. Hold that single word in your mind as you read on, because the rest of the chapter is one town after another where exactly this was not done. What God asks He asks fully, and the tragedy of Judges 1 is measured against the one place where it was fully given. it to destruction, holding nothing back, and rename the place Hormah to mark what was done there. This is what complete obedience looks like, the thing God had actually commanded, carried all the way through, and the chapter deliberately shows it to us once, clearly, so that we cannot miss how different everything that follows will be.

Judges 1:19–21 (BSB)

¹⁹ The LORD was with Judah, and they took possession of the hill country; but they could not drive out the inhabitants of the plains because they had chariots of iron.

²⁰ Just as Moses had promised, Judah gave Hebron to Caleb, who drove out the descendants of the three sons of Anak.

²¹ The Benjamites, however, failed to drive out the Jebusites living in Jerusalem. So to this day the Jebusites live there among the Benjamites.

Here the light begins to fade. The verse opens with the truest thing that can be said, the LORD was with Judah, and they took the hill country, and then it adds a small word that will echo through the whole book: but. They could not drive out the people of the plains, because those people had chariots of iron. The reason sounds practical, and it is, and yet stand it next to the giants of Hebron who had just been driven out in the very next breath, and a question forms that the chapter will not let go. Was it truly that they could not, or that the cost looked too high and the faith ran too thin? Caleb, an old man now, still drives out the sons of Anak just as Moses had promised, because he still believes the promise. But Benjamin lets the Jebusites stay in Jerusalem, and the narrator quietly notes that they are still there to this day. What is left in the land does not leave on its own. It settles in and stays.

Judges 1:22–26 (BSB)

²² The house of Joseph also attacked Bethel, and the LORD was with them.

²³ They sent spies to Bethel (formerly known as Luz),

²⁴ and when the spies saw a man coming out of the city, they said to him, “Please show us how to get into the city, and we will treat you kindly.”

²⁵ So the man showed them the entrance to the city, and they put the city to the sword but released that man and all his family.

²⁶ And the man went to the land of the Hittites, built a city, and called it Luz, which is its name to this day.

The house of Joseph goes up against Bethel, and again the promise holds: the LORD was with them. They take the city, sparing the one man who helped them in and letting him go free with his family, an old, familiar shape of mercy, like Rahab before the walls of Jericho. And yet even here a small shadow falls. The man walks off to the land of the Hittites and builds a new Luz, so that the old Canaanite name and the old Canaanite ways are simply transplanted a little farther off rather than ended. It is a minor detail, easy to read past, but the book is teaching us to notice such things. What is not thoroughly dealt with does not vanish. It relocates, puts down roots somewhere else, and waits.

Judges 1:27–28 (BSB)

²⁷ At that time Manasseh failed to drive out the inhabitants of Beth-shean, Taanach, Dor, Ibleam, Megiddo, and their villages; for the Canaanites were determined to dwell in that land.

²⁸ When Israel became stronger, they pressed the Canaanites into forced labor, but they never drove them out completely.

Now the refrain sets in with full weight, and it will not stop. Manasseh fails to drive out the people of six named towns, and the reason given is telling: the Canaanites were determined to dwell in that land. The enemy’s resolve was firm while Israel’s was soft. And when Israel finally did grow strong enough to act, look at what it chose to do with that strength. It did not finish the task; it monetized it. It pressed the Canaanites into forced labor (מַס) mas, pronounced MAHS. Strong's H4522, forced labor, conscripted workforce, levy. Mas is a levy of forced labor, a body of conscripted workers. The word marks the shape that Israel’s compromise repeatedly takes in this chapter. Rather than drive the Canaanites out as God had commanded, tribe after tribe grows strong enough to subdue them and then puts them to work, keeping the very people they were told to remove because those people had become useful. It looks, on the surface, like a victory: the enemy is under Israel’s thumb. But it is disobedience wearing the face of success. The thing God said to clear from the land is still in the land, only now with a wage and a place at the table. What is merely managed instead of removed always finds a way to stay. and let them stay, trading obedience for a workforce. This is the exact anatomy of compromise. What God said to remove is kept, put to use, made profitable, and tolerated, and the tolerating is dressed up as strength. But Scripture names it plainly: they never drove them out completely.

Judges 1:29 (BSB)

²⁹ Ephraim also failed to drive out the Canaanites living in Gezer; so the Canaanites continued to dwell among them in Gezer.

The refrain repeats, shorter now, almost weary. Ephraim, the other great house of Joseph, fails at Gezer, and the result is stated as flatly as a fact of geography: the Canaanites continued to dwell among them. The word among is the heart of the matter. This is no longer a war being finished at the edges of the land. It is two peoples, and two ways of worship, settling down to live in the same towns. Every repetition of this sentence is another door left open, another compromise that the next generation will inherit already made, and will never think to question.

Judges 1:30–33 (BSB)

³⁰ Zebulun failed to drive out the inhabitants of Kitron and Nahalol; so the Canaanites lived among them and served as forced laborers.

³¹ Asher failed to drive out the inhabitants of Acco, Sidon, Ahlab, Achzib, Helbah, Aphik, and Rehob.

³² So the Asherites lived among the Canaanite inhabitants of the land, because they did not drive them out.

³³ Naphtali failed to drive out the inhabitants of Beth-shemesh and Beth-anath. So the Naphtalites also lived among the Canaanite inhabitants of the land, but the inhabitants of Beth-shemesh and Beth-anath served them as forced laborers.

The list rolls on, tribe after tribe, and something quietly terrible happens in the grammar itself. Of Zebulun it is still said that the Canaanites lived among them, Israel the host. But by the time we reach Asher the sentence has flipped: the Asherites lived among the Canaanite inhabitants of the land, as though Israel were now the guest in someone else’s country, absorbed rather than in possession. Naphtali is the same, dwelling among the peoples it had been sent to displace. The refrain that began as a report of military shortfall has become a description of a people slowly dissolving into the very culture they were called to be set apart from. This is what half-obedience does over time. It does not stay half. It keeps giving ground until the one who compromised is the one surrounded.

Judges 1:34–36 (BSB)

³⁴ The Amorites forced the Danites into the hill country and did not allow them to come down into the plain.

³⁵ And the Amorites were determined to dwell in Mount Heres, Aijalon, and Shaalbim. But when the house of Joseph grew in strength, they pressed the Amorites into forced labor.

³⁶ And the border of the Amorites extended from the Ascent of Akrabbim to Sela and beyond.

The chapter ends at its lowest point, and the reversal is now complete. Dan does not merely fail to drive out its enemies; the Amorites drive out Dan, forcing the tribe back up into the hill country and barring them from the plains that were meant to be their inheritance. The people who were sent to dispossess are the ones being dispossessed. Once more we hear that the Amorites were determined to dwell in the land, that firm enemy resolve set against Israel’s fading one, and once more the only answer Israel can muster, when it finally finds some strength, is forced labor instead of true obedience. The book closes its first chapter with a border drawn by the Canaanites, not by Israel. The land God gave is being quietly repossessed, one tolerated town at a time.