Judges is a different sort of book than Joshua. In Joshua, we have indications that the Conquest is not complete, but the thrust of the book is that the Lord keeps His promises and gives Israel the land. In Judges, the focus is on human failure—and will we witness human failure in this book! So, Judah is successful in establishing its territory; they even go so far as to burn Jerusalem, which is not even part of their patrimony. But nobody else finishes the job. Benjamin won’t even expel the Jerusalemites, although we’ve just read that Judah did the hard work of conquering the city! The low point seems to be Dan, who don’t just fail to take their land; they actually get repulsed back into the hills. (The success of Judah might explain their later history: they resist the temptations to idolatry longer and more successfully than the northern tribes, perhaps because at the beginning they drove out the Canaanites.)
There are some hints in Judges 1 about why the job isn’t finished. First, there is the passing comment about Judah maiming Adoni-bezek. They cut off his thumbs and big toes, rendering him humiliated and unfit for military service. The thing to notice, though, is that he says he did the same thing to 70 of his enemies. Israel is starting to behave like the very people she is conquering. Second, there is the statement in verse 28 that Israel enslaved the Canaanites. Two problems with that. 1) The Israelites were supposed to destroy them or drive them out, so they’re compromising on God’s command. 2) They were supposed to remember that they had been slaves. How ironic is it that they began to act like the oppressor?
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