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Bethel, or "The house of God", had been given to the place by Jacob, but it had still
retained its original name of Luz. Worldly wisdom would have commended the action of
the tribe of Joseph. The spies see a man coming out of the city and promise him mercy if
he will show them the entrance into it. The city is taken and the man and his family
spared. Instead of accepting the change, however, and remaining as one of the first
citizens of the renamed city of Bethel, we read:
"The man went into the land of the Hittites, and built a city, and called the name
thereof Luz: which is the name thereof unto this day" (Judges 1: 26).
Paul's comment seems apposite here:
"If I build again the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor" (Gal. 2: 18).
"How turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements?" (Gal. 4: 9).
We next come to the central section of the structure: Judges 1: 27-33. The repetition
of the word "Neither" here is a solemn witness of failure.
"The Canaanites would dwell" (Judges 1: 27).
The word rendered "would" is the Hiphil form of yaal, and is variously translated in
the A.V. "begin", "be content", "please", "assay", and "would". Perhaps in the
passage under consideration the modern phrase "made overtures" gives a fairly good idea
of the Canaanites' attitude. The Canaanites expressed their willingness to pay tribute or
do anything asked of them in exchange for permission to dwell in the land; and counsels
of worldly wisdom and that much praised quality "humanity" prevailed.
"The Asherites dwelt among the Canaanites" (Judges 1: 32).
This is ever the sequence. First the world comes into the church; then the church
finds its place in the world. Give the Canaanite an inch and he will soon claim a yard, for
the yard has already been conceded in principle. The word "among" is gereb, which is
elsewhere translated "bowels", "heart", and "inward part", indicating how complete
was Israel's failure. The subsequent decline and fall described in the succeeding chapters
of Judges is incipient in these tragic verses of chapter 1:
"The Amorites forced the children of Dan" (Judges 1: 34).
Here the full tale of degradation is told, for the word translated "forced" is the word
used in Exod. 3: 9:
"I have also seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians oppress them."
Israel, redeemed from the bondage of Egypt, and beyond both the Red Sea and the
Jordan, enter again into bondage. The N.T. equivalent is found in Galatians: