Judges · chapter 1 of 21
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Judges 1 records the campaigns of the tribes of Israel after the death of Joshua. Judah, with Simeon, defeats the Canaanites, takes Hebron, and gives Caleb and Othniel as examples of courage, but the chapter ends with a list of tribes that failed to drive out the people of the land, which sets up the spiritual decline of the rest of the book.
The book of Judges begins just after Joshua's death and opens the period between the conquest and the monarchy. Israel asks the Lord which tribe should go up first against the Canaanites. The chapter works like an x-ray: it starts with victories under Judah's leadership and ends with tribes settling for an incomplete conquest.
After Joshua's death the Israelites ask the Lord, and he answers that Judah should go up. Judah invites Simeon, and together they defeat the Canaanites and Perizzites at Bezek. They capture the king, Adoni-bezek, and cut off his thumbs and big toes; he admits that God is repaying him for what he did to seventy kings. Judah also attacks Jerusalem and sets it on fire, then fights the Canaanites of the hill country, the Negeb and the lowland.
Caleb takes Hebron and offers his daughter Achsah as a wife to whoever conquers Kiriath-sepher. Othniel, son of Caleb's younger brother Kenaz, does it, and Achsah asks her father for springs of water as well as the dry land she received. The Kenites are noted as settling in Judah. Judah and Simeon destroy Zephath, which is renamed Hormah, and Judah takes some Philistine cities, but cannot drive out the people of the plain because they had iron chariots, although the Lord was with him.
Benjamin fails to drive out the Jebusites of Jerusalem. The house of Joseph takes Bethel, using information from a man who shows them the way into the city. Then comes a list of tribes that did not drive out the Canaanites: Manasseh, Ephraim, Zebulun, Asher, Naphtali and Dan, the last pushed into the hill country by the Amorites. In many cases the Canaanites became forced laborers, but they remained in the land.
References follow ESV book names and verse numbers. Read each verse in your Bible before the explanation.
The Lord answers that Judah should go up first, since he has given the land into Judah's hand. The chapter begins with a right dependence on God, and that attitude is exactly what is lost later in the book.
The text says the Lord was with Judah, yet they could not drive out the people of the plain because of their iron chariots. It signals that fear and human measurements begin to weigh more than God's promise.
Benjamin did not drive out the Jebusites of Jerusalem, and they kept living there. An incomplete conquest leaves a neighbor who will later cause trouble for the people.
When Israel grew strong, it put the Canaanites to forced labor but did not drive them out completely. The people preferred the comfort of tribute to full obedience.
6 questions with answers and references, ready for Sunday school, small group or a Bible quiz night.
Answer: The tribe of Judah. — Judges 1:2
Answer: They cut off his thumbs and his big toes. — Judges 1:6
Answer: Othniel, son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger brother. — Judges 1:12-13
Answer: Because they had iron chariots. — Judges 1:19
Answer: The tribe of Benjamin. — Judges 1:21
Answer: The tribe of Dan. — Judges 1:34
Judges 1 shows that great failures often begin with half obedience. Israel does not stop believing in God overnight; it simply grows used to living alongside what God told it to remove. In a class or small group, it helps to ask which area of life we have left 'under tribute' instead of surrendering it fully to the Lord.
There is encouragement too: where Judah asks God and obeys, there is victory. God's direction remains the starting point of every step, and the faithfulness of people like Caleb and Othniel shows that a simple, courageous faith can shape a whole generation.
Judges 1 ends with tribes that did not drive out the Canaanites and with Dan shut up in the hills. The problem is already planted. Judges 2 will explain why God allowed this situation and will describe the cycle of sin, oppression and rescue that shapes the rest of the book.
The text presents the conquest of Canaan as God's judgment on peoples whose wickedness was severe, and Adoni-bezek himself admits he is suffering what he did to others. That violence belongs to a unique moment in Israel's history and is not a model for how Christians should treat their enemies today.
Othniel was Caleb's nephew, the son of his brother Kenaz, and he conquered Kiriath-sepher to marry Achsah. Later, in Judges 3, he becomes the first judge God raises up to deliver Israel.
Because it explains the underlying problem of the book: Israel was not undone by weakness but by mixing with the customs and gods of the peoples it was supposed to leave behind. It prepares the explanation in Judges 2 about idolatry and the cycle of the judges.