Joshua is dead, and the book opens on unfinished business: the land is given but not taken. Judah makes a strong start — even a captured pagan king admits God is settling accounts — but then the record turns, tribe by tribe, into a list of things not done. They could not drive them out. The Canaanites are put to forced labour instead, and the compromise that looks like a bargain is the crack the rest of the book falls through.
A study in Judges 1 · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 7 min read
Who Shall Go Up For Us First?
“Now after the death of Joshua it came to pass, that the children of Israel asked the LORD, saying, Who shall go up for us against the Canaanites first, to fight against them? And the LORD said, Judah shall go up: behold, I have delivered the land into his hand.”
Judges 1:1-2
It begins well. With Joshua gone, Israel does the right thing — it asks God — and God answers: Judah first, and the land is already “delivered.” Judah invites Simeon along, they win at Bezek, and for a few verses the conquest looks as if it will simply carry on. The problem in Judges is never that God stopped keeping His promises. It is that Israel stopped acting on them.
As I Have Done, So God Hath Requited Me
“And Adoni-bezek said, Threescore and ten kings, having their thumbs and their great toes cut off, gathered their meat under my table: as I have done, so God hath requited me.”
Judges 1:7
The captured Canaanite king had crippled seventy rival kings and made them scrap for food under his table; now the same is done to him, and he says it plainly: God hath requited me. A pagan tyrant reads his own downfall as divine justice, measure for measure — the principle Jesus would put as “with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again” (Matthew 7:2). Even Israel’s enemies can see the hand of God at work; the tragedy of the book is how often Israel cannot.
The LORD Was With Judah, But They Could Not Drive Out
“And the LORD was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.”
Judges 1:19
Read the halves of that verse against each other. The LORD was with Judah — and Judah could not? Iron chariots had never stopped God before; Joshua burned a field of them (Joshua 11:9) and Deborah would rout nine hundred (Judges 4:3, 15). “Could not” here means “did not press,” because the valley looked too hard. The moment Israel measured the enemy instead of God, the conquest stalled — not for want of power, but for want of nerve.
The Canaanites Would Dwell In That Land
“Neither did Manasseh drive out the inhabitants of Beth-shean… but the Canaanites would dwell in that land. And it came to pass, when Israel was strong, that they put the Canaanites to tribute, and did not utterly drive them out.”
Judges 1:27-28
Then comes the drumbeat: neither did Ephraim, neither did Zebulun, neither did Asher, neither did Naphtali. When Israel got strong enough to force the Canaanites into labour gangs, it did that instead of obeying — a tax revenue where there should have been a clean break. It looked like a shrewd deal. The next chapter names it for what it was: a snare that would take the nation down.
“After the settlement in Canaan the tribes made no vigorous effort to complete the conquest of the land. Satisfied with the territory already gained, their zeal soon flagged, and the war was discontinued.”
Ellen G. White · Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 543
