Chapter 1. Success and Failure.
The Success and Obedience of Judah and Simeon (Judges 1:1-20).
After the death of Joshua the children of Israel enquired of Yahweh which tribes should first go up against the remaining Canaanites. Judah was ordered to go up, and with Simeon had success against the Canaanites under Adonibezek, whom they brought captive to Jerusalem, and against the Canaanites in Hebron, Debir, Zephath, Hormah, Gaza, Ashkelon, and Ekron, but they could not drive out the inhabitants of ‘the valley', the coastal plain.
The Benjaminites did not have as good success as Judah against the Jebusites in Jerusalem. Judges tells us little of their other activities apart from the subjection of a part around Jericho under the Moabites (Judges 3) and their disastrous disagreement with the tribal confederacy in Judges 20. Their lot was between Ephraim and Judah (Joshua 18:11) and reached to the Jordan (Joshua 18:20).
The house of Joseph (Ephraim and Manasseh) captured Bethel and made the Amorites tributary.
The tribes of Manasseh, Ephraim, Zebulun, Asher, and Naphtali were relatively successful but, in disobedience to God, did not drive out the Canaanites from several places which belonged to them, though many of them eventually became their tributaries. We must recognise that Canaanite life was attractive in its own way. They were far more sophisticated than the Israelites, with many of the finer things in life, and their religion was seen as directly helping in the fruitfulness of the fields as by ‘sympathetic magic' it ensured rain, and the new birth and growth of plants. This was partly accomplished by overt sexual activity which was seen to stimulate nature into activity. Small images of Baal and Ashtaroth (Astarte) were commonplace in Israelite homes of the period.
The Amorites were too powerful for the tribe of Dan, who had therefore to live in the hill country.