LITMIR.BIZ

In keeping with Moses’s promise (Josh 14:6–15), Caleb was successful in “driving out” the Anakites and capturing Hebron.84 However, though Jerusalem was in territory allocated to Benjamin (Josh 15:8; 18:28), they were unsuccessful in “driving out” the Jebusites who lived there; in fact, these peoples lived there with the Benjaminites “to this day.”85

The remainder of the account (Jdg 1:22–36) describes the continuing failure of the Joseph league: the two Joseph tribes proper, Manasseh (1:27–28) and Ephraim (1:29), then Zebulun (1:30), Asher (1:31–32), Naphtali (1:33), and finally Dan (1:34–35).86 Perhaps these continued failures were the result of the precedent set at Bethel (1:22–26). In any case, the tribes do not evict the land’s inhabitants (1:26–35), but cohabit with them, even subjecting them to slavery and feudalism (“forced labor,” 1:28, 30, 33, 35).87 The inability to “drive out” the inhabitants of various parts of the Promised Land is repeatedly noted (1:19, 21, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33). Indeed, the Amorites, in a climactic paragraph at the end of Judges 1, begin to “oppress” (cxl, lkhts) the Israelites instead (1:34), an ominous development and a foreshadowing of what would happen with recurring and tragic frequency: 2:18; 4:3; 6:9; 10:12 (all have the root cxl). And moreover, the only nation whose borders are mentioned is that of these Amorites (1:36)—it is not the attacking nation that is expanding its borders: “a final sardonic comment on the chapter as a whole!”88

Interestingly, while 1:27 states that Manasseh “did not drive out” the Canaanites, Josh 17:12 notes that Manasseh “was not able to drive out” these inhabitants (17:18 mentions their iron chariots, too). The theological purpose of the narrator of Judges is to suggest that this failure was inexcusable, more due to lack of desire than lack of ability.89

      Naphtali’s failure to “drive out” the inhabitants of Beth-shemesh and Beth-anath (Jdg 1:33), is particularly poignant: those towns were named after Canaanite deities, Shemesh and Anath. Pagan religiosity and culture remained completely untouched by the Israelite campaigns. In any case, the absence of any mention of Yahweh in the later military undertakings of this pericope, unlike in Jdg 1:2, 4, 19, 22, is also telling.

      The relatively minor failures of Judah’s campaign thus led into the major failures of the operations of the house of Joseph. Our curiosity is aroused about the cause of all these failures—only one such adversity was given a reason (1:19), leading one to suspect an intentional and widespread abrogation of responsibility, rather than any external cause thereof. We find the real answer only in 2:1–5—there was a spiritual reason for the Israelites’ lack of military success. These failures, we are told there, stemmed from an illicit covenanting with the inhabitants of Canaan, noted in 1:22–26. Despite the assured presence of Yahweh as the house of Joseph went against Bethel, the campaign was a failure—not only did a Hittite family go free (1:25), the destroyed city was also rebuilt as Luz (1:26): the people and their culture had rebounded (see below). This was clear disobedience to divine will that no covenant be made with the local peoples: Israel was to destroy them utterly (Jdg 2:2; Deut 7:1–2, 16). This covenantal failure, snowballing over generations, would ultimately result in an abandonment of Yahweh for the gods of the land (Jdg 2:2; 10:6–14; also see Deut 7:4–5, 25–26).

      Compromise and disobedience are always disastrous. In sum, the degradation of the nation had begun immediately after the demise of Joshua. This pericope begins with the most positive of the tribes (Judah) and ends with the most negative (Dan). Almost the same sequence of tribes is followed in the sections on individual judges (Jdg 3:7—16:31), with this progressive dissolution expressly detailed.

      1.2 Faithfulness to God involves behavior distinct from that of unbelievers, maintenance of godly traditional values, and abandonment of reliance on human strategies for success.

      There are three anecdotal interpolations in what is otherwise the account of a military campaign: 1:5–7 (featuring Adoni-bezek); 1:12–15 (featuring Achsah); and 1:23–26 (featuring the house of Joseph and Bethel). This section will examine these further, along with the summarizing indictment of the Israelites in 2:1–5.

Adoni-bezek is the first individual Canaanite mentioned in Judges; in fact, he is the first named leader we encounter in the book. It is significant that this defeated foe recognizes the truth that actions have consequences, something the Israelites fail to see time and again, as the rest of Judges will describe. Upon reading 1:4–7, one might be justified in wondering how Israelites could so mutilate a human, albeit an enemy (mutilation after death is seen in 2 Sam 4:12). Certainly, there was retribution being visited on the king for his past misdeeds (Jdg 1:7), but those evidently were not misdeeds directed against the Israelites. In other words, the Israelites were doing exactly what their Canaanite enemy had done, but without provocation, except for the fact that he was an enemy ruler. This was not a tit-for-tat, at least not for any mutilation or gross violation Adoni-bezek had perpetrated against the Israelites. There is also the oddity of Adoni-bezek being allowed to live post-mutilation till he was taken to Jerusalem. If he was not to be killed immediately, why was he mutilated? In fact, the text does not even tell us that he was later executed by the Israelites, but simply that “he died there” (1:6, 7). In contrast, the original Jerusalemites were utterly destroyed by the Israelites (1:8). The treatment of Adoni-bezek sounds like the beginning of the “Canaanization” of Israel, further suggested by the subsequent degradation of its military endeavor, cohabitation with Canaanites, and involvement in idolatry found in rest of this pericope (see above). In the large scheme of the book, Adoni-bezek, the Canaanite who killed seventy kings, foreshadows Abimelech, the only other “king” in Judges, an Israelite, who also killed seventy (9:5).90 This Israelite “Adoni-bezek” turned out to be worse than his Canaanite counterpart, killing in cold blood his own brothers, with retribution also mentioned twice in his story (9:24, 56, as opposed to only once in 1:7): Adoni-bezek’s thumbs and toes for those of the seventy kings he had killed; and Abimelech killed by a stone for the seventy siblings he had killed on a stone. “[H]e [Abimelech] may have even out-Canaanised the Canaanites.”91 Israel was not just in Canaan now; Canaan was in Israel!

Another anecdotal “interpolation” occurs in 1:12–15. In Joshua, Kiriath-arba/Hebron was given to Caleb in Joshua’s day (Josh 15:13; and see 14:6–15); in Judges, it is Judah that gets Hebron, and this after Joshua’s day (Jdg 1:10–11).92 In Joshua, Caleb was the one who defeated the three Anakites, Sheshai, Ahiman, and Talmai (Josh 15:14–15); in Jdg 1:10 it is Judah who does so.93 The very

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