Judges1chapter 1

Judges 1:1-4

after the death of Joshua: The book opens with a question put to God rather than an order handed down, and Albert Barnes notes that the phrase asked the Lord occurs only in Judges and the books of Samuel. The answer names Judah, the tribe of Genesis 49:8, whose hand shall be in the neck of his enemies. The same question is asked once more at 20:18, when the enemy is Benjamin, and the answer is Judah again, so the book opens and closes its warfare with the same tribe going up first. Simeon comes along because Joshua 19:1 and 19:9 place Simeon's inheritance inside Judah's own portion.

Judges 1:5-8

The captured king of Bezek passes sentence on himself, as I have done, so God hath requited me, and he is the one Canaanite in the book given a line of theology. Seventy kings had gathered their food under his table with their thumbs and great toes cut off, a mutilation that leaves a man unable to grip a sword or run. Thumb and great toe are named together elsewhere in Scripture only in the consecration of the priests and the cleansing of the leper, at Exodus 29:20, Leviticus 8:23 and Leviticus 14:14, where blood is put on both. Verse 8 says Judah took Jerusalem and burned it, and verse 21 says the Jebusites were still living there when this was written, so the city was struck rather than held.

Judges 1:9-15

Verses 10 to 15 repeat Joshua 15:14 to 19 almost word for word, so the same events stand in two books, once as the record of Judah's inheritance and once as the opening of Judah's war. The man who takes Debir is Othniel, who becomes the first judge of Israel at 3:9 with the Spirit of the Lord coming upon him at 3:10, so the book's first deliverer is introduced winning a wife. Achsah is the only person in the chapter who asks for anything, and what she asks for is water, since a field in the south country without springs cannot be worked. Both old names are kept, Hebron called Kirjath-arba and Debir called Kirjath-sepher, which is how these records mark towns that were standing long before Israel came.

Judges 1:16-18

The Kenites are the family of Moses' father in law, invited into Israel's portion at Numbers 10:29 to 32, and they settle in the south without taking a tribe's inheritance. Their presence in the land is what makes Heber the Kenite's tent possible at 4:11, where Jael drives the nail. The city of palm trees they come up from is Jericho, called by that name again at 3:13 and at Deuteronomy 34:3. Gaza, Askelon and Ekron are three of the five Philistine capitals, and all three are in Philistine hands through the rest of Judges and the books of Samuel, so what verse 18 records as taken did not stay taken.

Judges 1:19-21

the Lord was with Judah: This is the sentence the book turns on, and it holds two clauses that sit hard against each other, the Lord was with Judah, and Judah could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley. The reason given is iron chariots, the same obstacle the house of Joseph raised at Joshua 17:16 and were answered on at 17:18, and nine hundred of them stand behind Sisera at 4:3 until a river takes them at 5:21. Verse 20 puts both outcomes in one chapter, Caleb expelling the three sons of Anak in the hill country while the plain is left alone. At verse 21 the verb moves from could not to did not, and the tribe named is Benjamin, where Joshua 15:63 tells the same failure of Judah, and both accounts stand as they are written.

Judges 1:22-26

The city is Luz, where Jacob slept and woke and called the place Bethel at Genesis 28:19, so the house of Joseph takes a town its own forefather had named. The scene follows the shape of Joshua 2, with spies, a resident who gives them the way in, a promise of mercy, and a household let go alive when the city falls. Where it parts from Rahab is the ending, since Rahab is brought inside Israel at Joshua 6:25 and stands in the line of Christ at Matthew 1:5, while this man leaves for the land of the Hittites and builds a second Luz. The text records what he did and gives no judgment on him, and none is offered here.

Judges 1:27-33

Five tribes are listed in the same form here, Neither did Manasseh, Ephraim, Zebulun, Asher and Naphtali drive out, and the wording weakens as the list runs. Manasseh's towns are Beth-shean, Taanach, Dor, Ibleam and Megiddo, the chain of fortresses across the valley of Jezreel, and Taanach and Megiddo are where Deborah's song puts the battle at 5:19 while Beth-shean is where Saul's body is fastened to the wall at 1 Samuel 31:10. Verse 28 names what Israel did instead of removing them, tribute, which turned a command into a source of income, and 1 Kings 9:20 to 21 says Solomon was still collecting it. At verse 32 the sentence turns over, since it is the Asherites who dwelt among the Canaanites rather than the Canaanites among Israel, and the tribe has become the one living in somebody else's country.

Judges 1:34-36

Dan fails in the other direction, since the Amorites force the tribe up into the mountain and will not suffer them to come down into the valley, so here an Israelite tribe is the one driven out. That pressure is the background of chapters 17 and 18, where Dan sends five men to look for somewhere else to live and takes Laish in the far north. Aijalon and Shaalbim were written into Dan's inheritance at Joshua 19:42, spelled Ajalon and Shaalabbin there, and the house of Joseph has to hold them in Dan's place. The chapter closes on the border of the Amorites rather than on the border of Israel.