Judges 1:21 - Meaning and Application

Benjamin failed to drive the Jebusites out of part of Jerusalem, the land that fell to his tribe, and that was a sad neglect. Judah had already shown the way and gained a real advantage by taking action (Judges 1:9), but Benjamin did not press the attack because they lacked determination. When God opens a path, courage is needed to follow it through.

The house of Joseph, that is, Ephraim and Manasseh, did a little more. They worked to take Bethel, a city on Benjamin’s border, and the Lord was with them. If the other tribes had used their strength, he would have been with them too. Some versions say, “The Word of the Lord was their helper,” meaning Christ himself, the captain of the Lord’s host, helped them as he helped all Israel before.

They used wise means to take the city. They sent spies to find the weakest point and the best way in, and those spies met a man who showed them a secret entrance. If that man helped them because he saw that the Lord was with Israel and that the land rightfully belonged to God’s people, he was not wrong, just as Rahab was not wrong to shelter God’s people while she knew her own nation stood against him. And the Israelites were also right to show mercy to him and his family by sparing their lives and letting them go wherever they wished.

Yet the man did not join himself to Israel. He feared them more than he loved them, so he moved away with a colony of Hittites, a people who seem to have settled in Arabia after Joshua’s conquest. There he built a city, likely a small one, and kept the old name Luz, which means “almond tree,” instead of the new name Bethel, “house of God.” He preferred the old name over one that reminded him of religion.

The spies reported what they had learned, and the army used that advantage to surprise the city and put its people to death (Judges 1:25). But beyond this one success, the children of Joseph did little that was noteworthy. Manasseh did not drive out the Canaanites from several important cities in its inheritance, and in truth did not even try much. The Canaanites had the land, and Manasseh did not have enough resolve to remove them. Israel only gained more ground as it grew stronger, and then the Canaanites were made to serve them by tribute and labor (Judges 1:28, Judges 1:35).

Ephraim also failed to drive out Gezer, a strong city, and allowed the Canaanites to live among them (Judges 1:29). Some think this means they even let them settle peacefully, with the rights of an unconquered people, instead of making them pay tribute. Zebulun, perhaps because it was near the sea and was meant to be a haven for ships, did not conquer Kitron and Nahalol. It only made the people there pay tribute (Judges 1:30).

Asher did worse than the rest. It left more towns in Canaanite hands than any other tribe, and even seems to have submitted to the Canaanites instead of ruling over them. The wording suggests that the Asherites lived among the Canaanites as though the Canaanites were still the true lords of the land. Naphtali also let the Canaanites remain among them (Judges 1:33), though later they did manage to bring them so far under control that they exacted tribute.

Dan was weakest of all in this matter. Instead of pushing out the Amorites where its land lay, Dan lacked the courage to stand against them and was forced up into the mountains. There they lived in the hill towns, but they did not dare go down into the valley, where the iron chariots were likely stationed (Judges 1:34). Even some of the mountain cities held out against them (Judges 1:35). So they were cramped in their own inheritance and later had to look far away, to Laish, for more room (Judges 18:1 and following).

In Jacob’s blessing, Judah is compared to a lion and Dan to a serpent. Here we see how Judah, with lionlike courage, went forward and succeeded, while Dan, with all its shrewdness, gained little ground. Clever plans and skill do not always achieve what they promise. What Dan failed to do, the Ephraimites partly did for them by putting the Amorites under tribute (Judges 1:35).

Taken as a whole, Israel was careless both about its duty and its own good. They did not do what they could have done to drive out the Canaanites and settle fully in the land. This came from several causes. They were lazy and afraid, unwilling to finish what they had begun. They were also greedy, since they thought the Canaanites’ labor and money would help them more than driving them out would. They had not learned to hate idolatry as they should, so they thought it was no great harm to let the Canaanites stay. And the same unbelief that kept their fathers out of Canaan for forty years kept them from fully enjoying it now.

Their distrust of God’s power and promise cost them the gains they had already made, and it led them into many troubles.