Judges 1

Judges 1 is the first chapter of the Book of Judges. It continues from Joshua 24, which reports Joshua's death, and summarizes how much land each tribe took possession of. This summary provides the background for the account of the period of the judges that unfolds from Judges 2 onward.

Outline

• Verses 1–3 Israel asks the LORD who should go up first to fight and is told that Judah should go. Judah goes up together with his brother Simeon.
• Verses 4–7 At Bezek they slay ten thousand men and cut off the thumbs and great toes of Adoni-bezek. He declares that he has been repaid for what he did to seventy kings, and he dies in Jerusalem.
• Verses 8–15 Judah sets Jerusalem on fire and strikes Hebron and Debir. Othniel, who takes Debir, receives Caleb's daughter Achsah as his wife, and Achsah receives the upper springs and the nether springs from her father.
• Verses 16–21 The Kenites dwell with Judah. Zephath is utterly destroyed and renamed Hormah, and Judah takes Gaza, Askelon, and Ekron. However, Judah cannot drive out the inhabitants of the valley because they have chariots of iron. Benjamin fails to drive out the Jebusites in Jerusalem.
• Verses 22–26 The house of Joseph learns from a man how to enter the city and strikes Bethel (formerly called Luz). The man then goes to the land of the Hittites and builds a new Luz.
• Verses 27–36 Manasseh, Ephraim, Zebulun, Asher, and Naphtali fail to drive out the Canaanites completely and put some of them to tribute (forced labor). The children of Dan are pressed back by the Amorites and confined to the hill country.

Key Verses

• Judges 1:1, "Who shall go up for us against the Canaanites first, to fight against them?" is the question that opens the era after Joshua.
• Judges 1:7, "as I have done, so God hath requited me," expresses the principle of retribution, voiced by a foreign king.
• Judges 1:28, "and did not utterly drive them out," forms the background for the rebuke that follows in chapter 2.

People and Places

• Adoni-bezek: The ruler of Bezek, captured by Judah.
• Caleb: Receives Hebron and drives out the three sons of Anak.
• Othniel: The son of Kenaz, who was Caleb's younger brother; he takes Debir. He reappears as the first judge in Judges 3.
• Achsah: Caleb's daughter, who becomes Othniel's wife.
• The Kenites: Descendants of Moses' father-in-law.
• Hebron: Formerly called Kirjath-arba.
• Jerusalem: The city where the Jebusites continued to dwell.
• Bethel: Formerly called Luz.
• Megiddo: One of the cities Manasseh did not take.

Points for Reflection

• The account of Caleb and Othniel (verses 10–15) appears in nearly identical form in Joshua 15. Interpreters are therefore divided between reading chapter 1 as an account of new events after Joshua's death and reading it as a tribe-by-tribe recapitulation of the earlier conquest.
• Verse 8 says that Judah struck Jerusalem, while verse 21 says that the Jebusites remained there. Among the explanations offered is that the city was burned but not occupied and held. Jerusalem is taken by David in 2 Samuel 5.
• Interpretations differ on verse 19, which states that although the LORD was with Judah, they could not drive out the inhabitants because of the chariots of iron. Some read it as revealing a lack of faith, while others read it as a straightforward record of the circumstances of the time.
• Moses' father-in-law in verse 16 is called Hobab in Judges 4:11. Interpretations differ on how he is related to Jethro in Exodus.

In the Korean Church

• The scene in which Achsah asks for the upper and nether springs is sometimes used as a sermon text on prayer that seeks God's blessing.
• The passage about the failure to drive out the Canaanites completely is sometimes used as a sermon text warning against incomplete obedience.