The Failures of the Southern Tribes
1: 1-21
The failures of the southern tribes DIG: What was significant about the death of Joshua? In what sense were Simeon and Judah brothers? What was the purpose of driving the Canaanites from the Land? Why was it important to eliminate them? What was the problem of war in the TaNaKh? How many times in these verses did the Israelites or their alien armies fail to drive out the Canaanites?
REFLECT: What does a “holy war” look like today? Who are we fighting against? Who are the Simeonites in your life? Do these verses turn on your competitive drive to win? Or does it turn your stomach in revulsion? Under what conditions would you “go to war” with your blood brother or your spiritual brother? When is it hard for you to obey God? Why? Who are the Canaanites that you are battling with today?
Instead of ridding the land of the Canaanites, Isra’el became like the Canaanites.
The War Against Adonai-Bezek (1:1-7): The death of Joshua links what follows to what preceded it (see the commentary on Joshua, to see link click Cu – The Death of Joshua). Have you ever noticed how new beginnings in the Scriptures are punctuated by the death of God’s servants? Exodus begins with the death of Joseph; Joshua begins with the death of Moses; Judges begins with the death of Joshua; and First Kings begins with the death of David. And yet for all that, God’s Kingdom does not collapse, not even when ADONAI takes His most useful servants.7
Therefore, Joshua’s death did not end Isra’el’s story; something followed it, and the book of Judges will tell us what it was. But the same words also separate what follows from what has gone on before. The death of Joshua was a boundary event, dividing Isra’el’s time into “before” and “after,” just as Yeshua’s death was later to divide world’s time into BC and CE. Moses personally commissioned Joshua as his successor (see the commentary on Deuteronomy Fs – Moses Went), and Joshua’s ministry had been a continuation and completion of Moses’ ministry (Joshua 4:14 and 23-24). The death of Joshua was the end of an era. Isra’el’s life would go on, but it would never quite be the same again.
The first difference Isra’el had to confront as they went forward was one of leadership. After Moses there had been Joshua, but after Joshua there was no obvious successor. Who would lead the Israelites now? Certainly no one with the same commanding presence and character. So the question asked at the beginning of the book is a natural one under the circumstances.8 The Israelites asked ADONAI, “Who will lead us now that Joshua is dead, who will be the first to go up and fight for us against the Canaanites” (1:1 NIV). In the critical moment when they were deprived of leadership, the people sought divine guidance by consulting the Urim and Thummim (see Exodus Gb – The Urim and Thummim: The Means of Making Decisions) through the high priest who, at the time, was Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron. The method of determining the will of ADONAI was, according to Rabbinical tradition, as follows: The Tetragrammaton, meaning the four-letter name of YHVH (Yud Hay Vav Hay), was placed in the high priest’s breastplate (see Exodus Ga – Fashion a Breastplate for Making Decisions), in which were set twelve precious stones, each engraved with the name of a tribe. By the power of the Divine the stone bearing Judah’s name was illuminated.
ADONAI replied: The tribe of Judah will go up; behold, I have handed the Land over to them (1:2 NIV). The tribal wars against the Canaanites were responses to Joshua’s last address, encouraging them to finish taking the Land. The men of Judah were not merely to conquer the territory assigned to them, but they were to conquer the whole Land on behalf of the other tribes. This was why Judah took Jerusalem, a city that belonged to the tribe of Benjamin, even though the tribe of Benjamin was unable to hold onto it. Judah was chosen to spearhead the attack because, in Jacob’s blessings, Judah was appointed to be the champion of his brothers (see Genesis Lg – The Scepter Will Not Depart from Judah Until He Comes to Whom it Belongs).9
Then the men of Judah said to the Simeonites their brothers, “Come up with us into the territory allotted to us, to fight against the Canaanites. Judah was Simeon’s brother not only in the sense that all the sons of Jacob were brothers, but Leah was their mother. Chosen as an ally because of the close proximity of their land which lay to the south. The Simeonite towns were within the territory of Judah (cf. Joshua 19:1-9 with Joshua 15:26-32 and 42). As a result of Simeon’s planning and participation in the slaughter at Shechem (see Genesis Ie – The Slaughter at Shechem by Simeon and Levi), Jacob had prophesied that the tribe of Simeon would be scattered (see Genesis Lf – Simeon and Levi). So, by the time of the second census the number of their fighting men had shrunk from 59,300 to just 22,220 (see the commentary on Numbers Ef – The Tribe of Simeon). Placing Simeon as a region within Judah rather than giving them their own distinct borders fulfilled this historical prophecy. The proposal from Judah was that if the Simeonites would help them in their fight against the Canaanites, then Judah would, in turn, help the Simeonites conquer their own region. The proposal was the unification of their forces against a common enemy. So the men of the tribe of Simeon went with the men of Judah (1:3 Hebrew).
Verse 4 presents a summary statement. So, the men of Judah went up. They alone were mentioned because they were the primary partner in the attack. And ADONAI gave them victory over the Canaanites and the Perizzites. Canaanites is a general term (the pre-Israelite inhabitants of Canaan); Perizzites is a specific term (those who lived around Bezek). According to Genesis 13:7, the Perizzites were already living in Canaan during Abraham’s lifetime, probably (here) in the central hill country to the north of Jerusalem. And they killed 10,000 enemy warriors at the town of Bezek (1:4 NLT). The size of the enemy force is impressive and underscores the significance of the victory. It would also shed further light on why Judah sought assistance from Simeon for this campaign: given the size and strategic importance of Jerusalem, engagement with a major enemy force could be expected.10
Following this summary statement, verses 5 through 7 provide the details of the war. It was there that they found Adonai-Bezek. Since Adonai-Bezek means “the Lord of Bezek,” the name was probably a dynastic title for the king of Bezek. The men of Judah fought against him and defeated the Canaanites and the Perizzites (1:5 ESV). Here the author follows a narrative pattern that repeats itself throughout the Former Prophets (First Samuel 4:10 and 17, 13:1; Second Samuel 2:17 and 18:6-7). This pattern briefly describes the battle, its outcome, and its casualties (verse 4), followed by an account of the death of a main character and the importance of the defeat of the enemy (verses 5-7).11
With his army decisively defeated, Adonai-Bezek fled, as Sisera would do later in the battle at Kishon (4:15). But the Israelites soon captured the king and cut off his thumbs and big toes (1:6 NLT). Adonai-Bezek thought to himself: Seventy kings with their thumbs and big toes cut off have picked up the scraps under my table. The reference to seventy kings is probably intended to be a round number meaning all the chieftains in the area. Now, god has paid me back for what I did to them. This statement is ambiguous, but as a Canaanite, it would have been unusual for him to have named YHVH, the God of Isra’el as his Judge.
However, Adonai-Bezek’s comment is loaded with irony. Here, by quoting the Canaanite king, the author offers the first hint of the Canaanization of Israelite society during the period of the judges. The fact that the king wasn’t executed was telling, for it points ominously to the actions of Isra’el in the rest of the book. Then they brought him to Jerusalem and he died there (1:7 NIV). But letting Adonai-Bezek live out his days in Jerusalem violated God’s command: When ADONAI your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out many nations before you . . . you are to strike them down, then you are to utterly destroy them. You are to devote them to destruction and show no mercy to them (Deuteronomy 7:1-2). Apart from the issue of having spared a man who clearly should have been executed with the rest of his subjects, instead of following God’s Word in the Torah, the Israelites used the Canaanites as models when deciding how to treat captives!
Adonai-Bezek is the first Canaanite we meet in Judges, and as a leader he is more than a random individual. He represents the kind of Canaanite regimes that YHVH will overthrow through the Israelites, who (we are to understand) are the agents of His judgement. This cameo appearance opens a window to the Canaanite culture as represented in its leaders – a culture ripe for judgement, whose day of reckoning should have come (Genesis 15:16).12
The War for Jerusalem (1:8): The men of Judah attacked Jerusalem and captured it, killing all its people and setting the city on fire (1:8 NIV). In this short note with little detail, the author relates Judah’s military success at Jerusalem, where they not only took the City but also inflicted the cherem judgment on its inhabitants (see Leviticus Ff – Cherem).13 However, the capture of the city of Jerusalem was only temporary, because it was lost again, according to verse 21, and later in 19:11-12, where Jerusalem was considered a foreign city. It was Judah who took the City, but since Jerusalem was in Benjamin’s territory, Judah did not settle there. However, Benjamin failed to take advantage Judah’s victory and the Jebusites came back, rebuilt Jerusalem and lived there, where it remained under Jebusite control until the days of David.14
The War for the Judean Territory (1:9-10): After that, the men of Judah went down. Because of Jerusalem’s unique location high atop the Judean Mountains, almost any journey from the City requires a physical descent to a lower elevation. So, the men of Judah went down to fight against the Canaanites who lived in the hill country in the north, the Negev in the south, and the foothills in the west.
They advanced against the Canaanites living in Hebron, a key city in the hill country in the north of Judah. Hebron was actually taken by Caleb (see below) according to Joshua 15:13-14; but he was a member of the tribe of Judah, so the author credits the conquest of Hebron to Judah. And defeated the forces of Sheshai, Ahiman, and Talmai (1:9-10 NIV). These three names connect the victory with a specific Hebron tradition that the reader is assumed to be familiar with. They were supposedly descendants of Anak, whose father was Arba, the great man among the Anakim (Joshua 14:15, cf. Joshua 15:14, 21:11 and Numbers 13:22). Therefore, the parenthesis in the middle of the verse (formerly called Kiriath Arba) provides the link between the general statement that precedes it: Judah advanced against the Canaanites living in Hebron, and the particular one that follows it: and defeated the forces of Sheshai, Ahiman, and Talmai. The presence of people in Hebron still using these names is testimony to the tenacity with which the Canaanites (here of the Anakim kind) clung to their land and traditions, despite the repeated attempts of the Israelites to dislodge them. Although this was a victory, it has embedded in it hints of the problem of the continued presence of Canaanites in “conquered territories” which gradually emerge into a full-blown problem for the Israelites as the chapter proceeds.15
The Conquest by Caleb and Othniel (1:11-15): From there they went to fight against the people living in the town of Debir (formerly called Kiriath-sepher, meaning book or scribe city). The book of Joshua also includes Isra’el’s fighting against Debir where Joshua took the city and completely destroyed everyone in it, leaving no survivors (Joshua 10:38-39). So, this is another example of a city that had been taken by the Israelites, but not held. More Canaanites moved back into Debir so that another battle had to be fought to regain it. In Judges, sometimes these efforts were successful, but too many times they were not.
Caleb had been promised Hebron by Moses because he was one of the two faithful spies who came back from Canaan (see the commentary on Numbers By – The Report of the Spies). Debir seems to also have been given to Caleb, so after conquering Hebron, he enlisted others for the attack on Debir.16 He did this by offering his daughter Aksah in marriage to the one who attacked and captured Debir. Caleb’s offer allowed the author to introduce the first major judge of the book (see Ap – The First Cycle: Othniel). Othniel, son of Kenas, Caleb’s nephew (3:9) was the one who conquered it. So Acsah became his wife (1:11-13 NIV).
When Acsah married Othniel, she urged her husband to ask her father for a productive field. Apparently Othniel was better at capturing cities than he was at asking favors from his new father-in-law, so Achsah had to do it herself. As she went to see her father and got down off of her donkey, Caleb asked her, “What do you want?” She replied: Give me a blessing (meaning, give me a material gift) since you have already given me the land of the Negev, give me springs of water also. Achsah did not mean that the city of Debir was in the Negev, for it was in the hill country of Judah, directly south of Hebron. She meant that the land had Negev-type qualities in that the soil was good, but it lacked water. She was not asking for more fertile land – the land itself was fertile – but water was necessary to make it fruitful. So Caleb gave her the upper and lower springs (1:14-15 Hebrew).17
The Migration of the Kenites (1:16): From the hill country in the north, the men of Judah left Jericho – known as the city of the palms (Deuteronomy 34:3; Joshua 3:13; and Second Chronicles 28:15) – with the Kenites, who were descendants of Moses’ father-in-law (see Exodus Cx – Now Jethro Heard Everything God Had Done). They traveled with Judah further south into the Negev. The Kenites were a nomadic tribe of metalworkers and skilled artisans who were associated with the Amalekites (First Samuel 15:6) and the Midianites (cf. Exodus 18:1 with Judges 1:16). They were proselytes (see Acts Bb – An Ethiopian Asks about Isaiah 53: see God-fearers) who had been so thoroughly integrated into the faith and culture of Isra’el that Caleb represented the tribe of Judah when the spies initially went into the Land (see the commentary on Numbers Bw – The Selection of the Spies). The author followed the migration of the Kenites southward by noting that the important town of Arad was not actually conquered by Judah, but by relatives of Moshe’s first wife from Midian. They settled down among the people there, near the town of Arad (1:16 NLT). This final comment is the key to this verse. Like their Judahite hosts in verses 5-7, they shared in Isra’el’s mandate to eliminate the Canaanites. But instead of destroying the city and its population, they settled down among them, thereby sowing the seeds of Canaanization that sprout up and flourish in the following chapters.18
The War of the Cities (1:17-20): The men of Judah went with the Simeonites their fellow Israelites, and attacked the Canaanites living in Zephath, located in the foothills in the west, and they totally destroyed the city (see Deuteronomy Dp – Regulations for a Holy War: Canaanite cities within the Land). Therefore, it was called Hormah, meaning destruction (1:17 NIV). The fact that Zephath is not mentioned anywhere else in the TaNaKh by name is silent testimony to the fact that its population was totally destroyed. Like two bookends, the reappearance of the Simeonites suggests that the larger unit that started in verse 3 is coming to a close. Interestingly, whereas there Simeon went with Judah; here, Judah goes with Simeon. In Joshua 19:4, Zephath, referred to as Hormah, was in the territory specifically allocated to Simeon. At the very least, the mention here of both Simeonites and Judahites is an added indication of the scale of this battle, and the alliance between the two tribes played a decisive part in the outcome. Zephath was no pushover!19
Verses 18-20 continue the account of Judah’s fortunes. But they stand outside the frame formed by the references to the Judah-Simeon alliance in verses 3 and 17. In addition, Judah captured, but not destroyed, the towns of Gaza, Ashkelon, and Ekron, along with the surrounding territories (1:18 NLT). At this time, the inhabitants had been Canaanites; but with the Philistine invasion, Isra’el would once again lose those territories. There was initial success because of divine aid: ADONAI was with the men of Judah, but once again they were unable to drive out the people living on the plains because they had iron chariots (1:19 Hebrew). But in light of the danger of not finishing the battle, no one, no matter how technologically superior to the Israelites, should have been able to withstand Judah’s attack. This verse must be read in light of Josuha 17:16-18, where Joshua specifically encouraged Ephraim and Manasseh by declaring that the Canaanites’ superior strength and their possession of iron chariots would be no hindrance to their conquest of the river valleys and plains. So why did the Judahites not take the plains here? The author does not say, but presumably they lost their nerve at this point, or they might have been satisfied with their past achievements. The account of Judah’s military fortunes ends with a final reminder of their treatment of Caleb. The town of Hebron was given to Caleb as Moses had promised (Joshua 14:9 and Deuteronomy 1:36). And Caleb drove out the people living there, who were descendants of the three sons of Anak (1:20 NLT). The author ends his survey of Judahite fortunes in the fulfillment of the divine mandate to take the Land by offering a summary evaluation. Positively, they were able to wrestle control away from the Canaanites in the hill country. But negatively, they were unable to take the plains because of the Canaanites’ technological superiority.20
In the next verse the tone changes, becoming increasingly pessimistic as the author observes what was supposed to be a triumphant campaign of conquest turn into a tragedy of compromise. Throughout, he laments the failure of the Israelite tribes to totally destroy and eliminate the Canaanites, which resulted in their slow downward spiral into spiritual adultery (see Deuteronomy Ca – Warning Against Idolatry).
Benjamin Failed to Conquer the Jebusites (1:21): The account of the failures of the remaining tribes (see Aj – The Failures of the Northern Tribes) begins with a summary of the Benjamite failure, and foreshadows their future disaster of being virtually annihilated by ADONAI and all the other northern tribes (see Cd – The Tribal War Against Benjamin). In verse 8, it was Judah who took Jerusalem, but since it was in Benjamin’s territory, Judah did not settle there. Unfortunately, Benjamin failed to take advantage of Judah’s victory and the Jebusites came back and rebuilt the City, where it remained under their control. However, the Benjamites failed to drive out the Jebusites who were living in Jerusalem. So, to this day, the Jebusites live there among the tribe of Benjamin (1:21 NLT). The Jebusites lived in the City until the reign of David when they were finally driven out (see the Life of David Co – David Conquers Yerushalayim).
Dear heavenly Father, praise You for being both the magnificent conquering Warrior and the wise and loving Father who indwells those who believe in You. Today, many people are “fans” of Your great love shown in Messiah’s offering Himself as the sin offering. But, being a “fan” does not qualify someone for receiving the inheritance of eternal salvation. Many in the tribes of Isra’el were “fans” of Your great love. They were so glad to have been delivered from Egypt and to be given a wonderful land that You promised filled with milk and honey. However, they forgot that their inheritance of the land was part of a covenant that they were to keep, to love ADONAI and to obey the Torah. God was very willing to do His part to give them the land – and the tribes were to do their part of the covenant to be God’s people. Obedience included destroying the evil Canaanites of the land (Joshua 3:10).
Unfortunately, the same attitude can be seen in many people today. It is much easier to simply receive a great gift, smile and say thank You, than to believe that you are a sinner, repent, and receive the great gift of salvation through Messiah’s death and resurrection. Unfortunately, people today do not realize that to trust You means to agree to follow You in a covenant relationship where both parties must do their part. Lord, help me to keep my eyes and heart on You. Help me to let my life draw others to You. Thank you for abiding in me to help me in temptations to conquer and have victory. No temptation has taken hold of you except what is common to mankind (First Corinthians 10:13). I love You and want to know You better and love You more. In Messiah Yeshua’s holy Name and power of His resurrection. Amen
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