A Promising Beginning Weakened by Incomplete Obedience

“Asked the LORD” is the formal inquiry through the priest, as Numbers 27:21 had arranged for Joshua. The same question, “which of us shall go up first”, returns near the end of the book, when the tribes prepare for war against Benjamin, and again the answer is Judah (Judges 20:18). The book opens and closes with it.

Jacob’s blessing had given Judah the lead: “thy father’s children shall bow down before thee... The sceptre shall not depart from Judah” (Genesis 49:8–10). “I have delivered” is in the past tense: the land is spoken of as given before Judah takes a step.

Simeon and Judah were both sons of Leah, and Simeon’s allotment lay inside Judah’s (Joshua 19:1). “Come up with me into my lot... and I likewise will go with thee into thy lot” is a pact of mutual help, and verse 17 shows Judah keeping its half.

The Perizzites may take their name from perazot, open villages without walls, the word Ezekiel uses for “the land of unwalled villages” (Ezekiel 38:11). Ten thousand is a round figure; “thousand” can also mean a military unit.

Adoni-bezek means “lord of Bezek”, a title more than a name. Some scholars connect him with Adoni-zedek, the king of Jerusalem in Joshua 10:1, whom the Greek of Joshua calls Adoni-bezek; his being taken to Jerusalem in verse 7 fits that suggestion, which remains a proposal.

The thumb of the right hand and the great toe of the right foot are the places touched with blood when Aaron and his sons were consecrated (Exodus 29:20). Cut off, they left a man unable to grip a sword or bow and unsteady on his feet: no longer a warrior, and no longer fit to rule.

“Gathered their meat under my table” pictures seventy crippled kings scrabbling for scraps like dogs. “Requited” is shillam, repaid, from the root of shalom, completeness. His own words echo the law of Leviticus 24:19: “as he hath done, so shall it be done to him.”

The King James “had fought” makes this sound like an earlier event, to fit verse 21 and the later capture by David (2 Samuel 5:6–9); the Hebrew verb is a plain past tense. Setting the city on fire may mean the lower town, while the Jebusite stronghold held out.

The three zones are the hill country, the Negev and the Shephelah; “the valley” is the low hill country between the mountains and the coastal plain. The campaign moves south from Jerusalem, “went down” from its height.

Joshua 15:14 says Caleb “drove thence” the three sons of Anak; here Judah “slew” them. One account uses the verb of expulsion, the other of killing, and one credits the man, the other the tribe.

Debir may be related to devir, the word for the innermost room of Solomon’s temple, the “oracle” (1 Kings 6:5), a back room or inner sanctum. Its older name, Kirjath-sepher, “city of the book”, has invited guesses about a shrine or an archive there.

The offer repeats Joshua 15:16 word for word. The Book of Judges tells it again because Othniel, the man who wins Achsah here, will be the first judge in the book (3:9). The first hero is introduced through a marriage contract.

“Caleb’s younger brother” could describe Othniel or his father Kenaz; the Hebrew allows both. 1 Chronicles 4:13 lists Othniel among “the sons of Kenaz”. Either way, the first judge belongs to Caleb’s Kenizzite family.

“Moved him” is the verb heset, to incite or urge, used of Satan provoking David to number Israel (1 Chronicles 21:1) and of Jezebel who “stirred up” Ahab (1 Kings 21:25). Here the same verb describes a wife urging a husband toward a good request.

If Debir is Khirbet Rabud, southwest of Hebron, the springs of Seil ed-Dilbeh a few miles away, lying at two levels, fit “the upper springs and the nether springs”; the match is sometimes cited in support of that identification. Caleb gives more than was asked: two sources of water.

Moses had invited his Kenite brother in law Hobab, “Come thou with us, and we will do thee good” (Numbers 10:29). His descendants now settle with Judah in the dry country south of Arad. Jael, whose hand kills Sisera, belongs to this family by marriage (4:17).

“Utterly destroyed” is heherim, and the new name Hormah is built from the same root: the city is named for its destruction. Hormah lay in Simeon’s lot (Joshua 19:4), so Judah is keeping its promise to fight in its brother’s territory.

The Greek Old Testament reads the opposite: “Judah did not inherit Gaza”, nor Askelon nor Ekron. The Philistine cities appear in 3:3 among the nations left to test Israel, which fits the Greek better than the Hebrew.

The Hebrew lacks the word “could”: it says literally “for not to drive out the inhabitants of the valley”, and the King James supplies the helping verb. The same verse holds “the LORD was with Judah” and the iron chariots together.

“As Moses said” points back to the promise of Deuteronomy 1:36, that Caleb would receive the land his feet had trodden. Caleb “expelled” the sons of Anak, the very verb of driving out that the rest of the chapter will keep saying the tribes did not do.

Joshua 15:63 says Judah “could not” drive out the Jebusites; here it is Benjamin, and the verb is “did not”. Jerusalem lay on the border of the two tribes, and each book records the failure against a different one.

“The LORD was with them” is said in this chapter of Judah (verse 19) and of the house of Joseph (here), and of no other tribe. The two tribes that would lead the southern and northern kingdoms are the two marked by God’s presence.

“Descry” is 1611 English for spying out from a distance. The Hebrew is tur, the verb used for the twelve spies who “searched the land” (Numbers 13:2). The parenthesis about Luz reminds the reader of Jacob’s renaming of the city (Genesis 28:19).

“Shew thee mercy” is chesed, the covenant loyalty Rahab asked of the spies at Jericho (Joshua 2:12). This time the spies offer chesed first, in exchange for information, to a man met by chance on the road.

“The entrance” is the way into the city, perhaps a hidden postern or water passage rather than the main gate. Several Canaanite cities had such passages; David’s men took Jerusalem by “the gutter” (2 Samuel 5:8).

“The land of the Hittites” here means north Syria. The new Luz he founded has never been located. The man who betrayed one Luz rebuilt another under the same name, beyond Israel’s borders.

Beth-shean held an Egyptian garrison in the thirteenth and twelfth centuries BC; excavators found Egyptian governors’ residences and stelae of Seti I and Ramesses II there. A town under Pharaoh’s protection was not easily taken by a hill tribe.

“Tribute” is mas, forced labour. Solomon later had an officer “over the tribute”, Adoniram (1 Kings 4:6), whom the northern tribes stoned to death when they rebelled against Rehoboam (12:18). The system begun here became hated in Israel itself.

The Merneptah Stele, an Egyptian victory inscription of about 1208 BC, names Gezer as captured and adds, “Israel is laid waste, his seed is not”, the earliest mention of Israel outside the Bible. Gezer and Israel stand side by side on the same stone.

The Talmud (Megillah 6a) identified Kitron with Sepphoris, later the capital of Galilee. Nahalol is the Nahalal of Joshua 19:15, one of Zebulun’s Levitical cities, still shared with Canaanites.

Asher’s list of seven cities is the longest in the chapter. Accho, later Ptolemais, is the harbour where Paul stayed a day on his way to Jerusalem (Acts 21:7). Zidon, the great Phoenician city, never came under Israel’s control at all.

“The inhabitants of the land” is the phrase of God’s promise in Exodus 23:31: “I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand; and thou shalt drive them out before thee.” In Asher the phrase names the majority among whom Israel lived.

Both towns bear the names of gods: Beth-shemesh, “house of the sun”, and Beth-anath, “house of Anath”, the war goddess. Naphtali lived among towns still named for the deities of Canaan, though it drew labour from them.

“Forced” is lachats, to press or oppress, the verb God used of Egypt: “the oppression wherewith the Egyptians oppress them” (Exodus 3:9). The tribe meant to drive others out is itself pressed back into the hills.

Mount Heres means “mountain of the sun”, apparently another name for Ir-shemesh or Beth-shemesh (Joshua 19:41). “The hand of the house of Joseph prevailed” is literally “was heavy”: a neighbouring tribe did for Dan’s territory what Dan could not.

The ascent of Akrabbim, “scorpions”, is the pass on Judah’s southern border (Joshua 15:3). “The rock” may be Sela in Edom. Some Greek manuscripts read “the border of the Edomite” for “the Amorites”, which suits a southern border.