Judges 3:1

These nations remained in the land by the LORD’s own decision, and verse 1 gives his purpose in the same breath: he left them “to prove Israel by them”. The verb for “left”, yânach, means to deposit, to place or leave something, or to allow it to stay. It is a plain word, and the purpose that follows it shows that the LORD had a reason for letting these peoples stay.

His decision answers Israel’s own failure. God had commanded Israel to drive out the peoples of Canaan and to make neither covenants nor marriages with them (Deuteronomy 7:1–5). He had warned that any who were left would be “pricks in your eyes, and thorns in your sides” (Numbers 33:55), and Joshua repeated the warning before he died (Joshua 23:13). Then the tribes fell short, and Judges 1 records one tribe after another leaving the inhabitants in place. In Judges 2:20–23 the LORD declares that because Israel had transgressed his covenant and served other gods, he would no longer drive out the nations Joshua left, and that he would use them to prove Israel. Judges 3:1 takes up that word and says which nations they were and whom they were meant to prove.

So the nations were at once a consequence of Israel’s sin and a tool in God’s hand. Israel’s disobedience left the door open, and God chose to leave these peoples there for a purpose of his own. There is a sad irony in it, because the nations Israel failed to drive out became the very means by which God tested whether Israel would obey him. These verses form the bridge between the account of Israel’s failures in Judges 1–2 and the stories of the judges, which begin with Othniel straight after this passage.

To “prove”, nâçâh (also written nāsāh), means to test, try or put to the proof. The test was meant to bring into the open what was in Israel’s heart. Verse 4 states the aim: “to know whether they would hearken unto the commandments of the LORD”. God already knows every heart, so this knowing is Israel’s loyalty shown in what they actually did, laid open before themselves and others.

Moses used the same language for the forty years in the wilderness. The LORD led them “to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no” (Deuteronomy 8:2–3). The generation of the judges faced in Canaan the kind of test their fathers had faced in the desert. A psalm gives the picture behind the word: “For thou, O God, hast proved us: thou hast tried us, as silver is tried” (Psalm 66:10). Metal is tried in the fire to bring out what is pure, and God’s tests are for the good of those he tests.

Verses 1 and 2 name the people the test was for: “as many of Israel as had not known all the wars of Canaan”, and “such as before knew nothing thereof”. These were the Israelites who grew up after Joshua’s conquest. Judges 2:10–13 describes them as a generation which knew not the LORD, nor the works he had done for Israel, and which turned to Baal and Ashtaroth. The crossing of the sea (Exodus 14) and the swift victories under Joshua belonged to their parents’ experience. Now they would meet the LORD’s power for themselves, and learn to depend on him as their fathers had learned it in the wilderness.

Verse 2 says the nations were left “that the generations of the children of Israel might know, to teach them war”. The words “Only that” introduce the purpose, with the Hebrew raq lema’an, ‘only in order that’. The verb “know” is yâdaʻ, which takes in knowing by experience, and here it means learning war by meeting it. “To teach” is lâmad, a verb that means to learn in its simple form and to teach, instruct or train in the form used here, where one person causes another to learn. Strong’s gives “to goad” as the proper sense of the root. “War”, milchâmâh, is the ordinary word for battle and warfare. God himself is the teacher in this verse, and the nations he left are the lessons.

Verse 4 gives the measure of the test: “whether they would hearken unto the commandments of the LORD, which he commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses.” To “hearken”, shāma, is to hear, listen and obey, the kind of hearing that goes on to do what it hears. For Israel, hearkening to the LORD’s commands was the same thing as keeping covenant with him. The “commandments”, mitsvōt, are the precepts God gave through Moses at Sinai, the terms of the covenant made there (Exodus 19–24).

“By the hand of Moses” names Moses as the one through whom God gave the law, and “their fathers” ties the new generation to the covenant their parents had received. God’s standard stayed the same from one generation to the next, and Israel knew what he required of them, which made their failure all the more serious.

Verse 3 names the nations, and they are the peoples Israel meets again and again in the book. The word for “nations” in verse 1, gôwy, means a foreign nation or Gentile people.

The five lords of the Philistines. The word for “lords”, çeren, is given by Strong’s as an axle, and figuratively a peer, and it is also translated “plate”. In Scripture it is the title of the Philistine rulers, the seranim, who governed five cities on the south-western coast: Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron and Gath. The Philistines were known for their iron weapons, which Israel largely lacked, and they troubled Israel through the time of the judges and into the days of the kings, most famously in the story of David and Goliath (1 Samuel 17).

All the Canaanites. Kᵉnaʻanîy means a Canaanite, an inhabitant of Canaan, and the same word can also mean a merchant or trader. Here it is the broad name for the peoples of the land, whose worship of Baal and Asherah drew Israel away again and again.

The Sidonians. Sidon was a Phoenician city to the north, a power at sea and in trade. Its people worshipped Baal and Asherah, and that worship later did Israel great harm.

The Hivites of mount Lebanon. These lived in the northern mountains “from mount Baalhermon unto the entering in of Hamath”. Baʻal Chermôwn means “possessor of Hermon” or “lord of Hermon”, a peak or district in the Anti-Lebanon range. The name carries the name of Baal, a hint of the worship that filled these regions. “The entering in of Hamath” is the pass toward Hamath in the far north, and the two landmarks together mark how far the unconquered land reached.

Verse 5 gives a second list, the peoples Israel lived among: the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. The Hittites were known for a powerful empire, the Amorites were a widespread people whom Scripture links with idolatry and wickedness, and the Perizzites were country people. The Hivites included the people of Gibeon, who deceived Israel in Joshua’s day, and the Jebusites held Jerusalem until David took it (2 Samuel 5:6–9).

Verses 5 and 6 give Israel’s answer to the test in three steps. First, “the children of Israel dwelt among” the peoples of the land. “Children” is bên, son, so the children of Israel are the sons of Israel, the whole nation descended from Jacob and bound to God by covenant. “Dwelt”, yâshab, means to sit down, to dwell or remain, and to settle. It describes settled life in a place, and here it shows Israel making its home alongside the nations it had been told to drive out, with the work of the conquest laid aside. “Among” is qereb, the midst or inward part of something, so Israel lived in the midst of these peoples.

Second, “they took their daughters to be their wives, and gave their daughters to their sons.” lâqach, “took”, is the common verb for taking, and nâthan, “gave”, is the common verb for giving, used in a great many ways. Together they describe marriage running both ways, as Israelite men married Canaanite women and Israelite parents gave their daughters to Canaanite men. This was a pattern across the whole people.

Third, they “served their gods”. ʻâbad means to work, serve, till or worship, and with “their gods” it means worship. The word for gods, ʼĕlôhîym, is the same plural word that names the true God, where it is read as a plural of majesty. Here it names the many gods of the Canaanites.

Each step led to the next, exactly as God had warned. “Neither shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son. For they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods” (Deuteronomy 7:1–5). Exodus gives the same warning, that taking their daughters for Israel’s sons would lead those sons after their gods (Exodus 34:15–16), and serving other gods broke the first two of the ten commandments (Exodus 20:3–6). Judges 3:6 reads like those warnings coming true. A psalm looks back on these years: “They did not destroy the nations, concerning whom the LORD commanded them: But were mingled among the heathen, and learned their works. And they served their idols: which were a snare unto them” (Psalm 106:34–40). Solomon later walked the same road, when his foreign wives turned his heart after other gods (1 Kings 11:4).

Verse 7 gives God’s verdict: “the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD”. The word raʻ means evil, a moral wrong against God and his covenant. “In the sight of the LORD” makes God himself the judge, and in Judges this phrase regularly comes just before his judgment. So it does here, for the next verse tells how the LORD sold Israel into the hand of Cushan-rishathaim, the first oppressor, before he raised up Othniel (Judges 3:7–8). The whole cycle of the book is set out in advance in Judges 2:14–19: Israel sins, God gives them into the hands of their enemies, they cry out, and he raises up a judge to deliver them.

“Forgat” is shâkach, to forget. Israel’s forgetting shows in what they did. They turned from the God who had brought them out of Egypt (Exodus 12) and made his covenant with them at Sinai, and they gave their worship to others. Moses had warned of exactly this, that when Israel came into a land of houses and vineyards it had not built and had eaten and was full, it must “beware lest thou forget the LORD, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage” (Deuteronomy 6:10–15).

“Baalim” is the plural of Baʻal, “lord” or “master”, the many local forms of the Canaanite storm and fertility god, who was often shown as a bull or with lightning. “The groves” translates ʼăshêrâh, the wooden poles or sacred trees of Asherah, a mother goddess counted as the consort of El or Baal. In a farming land that hung on rain and harvest, gods who promised fertile fields and many children drew Israel hard, and Canaanite worship brought with it ritual prostitution and the sacrifice of children.

Serving these gods was the gravest sin open to Israel, because the LORD had made himself known as the one true God and had said, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” The prophets called it adultery against the LORD, who was Israel’s husband (Jeremiah 3:8–9), and Paul describes the same exchange in all mankind, as people who knew God changed his glory into images (Romans 1:21–23).

Israel failed the test, and Jesus, the true Israel, was tested and stayed faithful. He was “in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). In the wilderness he answered Satan with the word of God, and to the offer of the kingdoms of the world he said, “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve” (Matthew 4:1–11). That is the loyalty Israel gave away when it served the gods of Canaan. Jesus always did the things that pleased the Father (John 8:29) and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross (Philippians 2:8), and by the obedience of one many are made righteous (Romans 5:19).

The judges gave Israel rest for a time. Jesus saves his people from their sins (Matthew 1:21), appeared once to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself (Hebrews 9:26), and is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). On the cross he spoiled principalities and powers and triumphed over them (Colossians 2:15), and he has overcome the world (John 16:33). He is the captain of his people’s salvation (Hebrews 2:10).

The commandments Israel failed to hearken to are now written on the hearts of God’s people in the new covenant (Jeremiah 31:31–33, Hebrews 8:6–10), and God gives a new heart and puts his Spirit within them so that they walk in his statutes (Ezekiel 36:26–27). Believers still have a war to learn. We wrestle against spiritual wickedness (Ephesians 6:12) with the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God (Ephesians 6:17), and in the strength Christ gives (Philippians 4:13). God has called his people out of darkness into his marvellous light (1 Peter 2:9), builds them together as his dwelling (Ephesians 2:19–22) and transforms them by the renewing of the mind (Romans 12:2). The promise of entering his rest still stands (Hebrews 4:1), for there remains a rest to the people of God (Hebrews 4:9). Our trials now refine a faith whose salvation Christ has already secured, and God works all things together for good for those who love him, to conform them to the image of his Son (Romans 8:28–29).

These verses show God ruling even over the results of his people’s failures. Israel’s disobedience left enemies in the land, and God took those very enemies and made them the means of teaching and proving a new generation. He tells his people plainly what he asks of them, in commandments given through Moses and passed from fathers to children. When he tests them, he does it to bring out what is in their hearts and to make them strong.

The passage also shows how a people forgets God. It happened in a generation that had grown up after the great works of the LORD, and it came step by step, from living among the nations to marrying them, to serving their gods, to forgetting the LORD. When a trial comes that we would rather be spared, verse 4 tells us what God is doing in it. He is proving whether his people will hearken to his word. And the gospel brings the very turn Israel failed to make, as people turn “to God from idols to serve the living and true God; And to wait for his Son from heaven” (1 Thessalonians 1:9–10).