Covenantal Negotiations at the City Gate Text: Judges 1:22-26
Introduction: The Messiness of Conquest
The book of Judges opens with the loose ends of conquest. Joshua is dead, and the tribes of Israel are left with the ongoing, gritty business of possessing the land God had promised them. This is not a clean, antiseptic affair. It is a story of battle, of compromise, of faith, and of failure. It is, in short, a story that looks a great deal like our own lives. We have been given glorious promises in Christ, but the working out of those promises involves sweat, and sometimes blood, and often messy, complicated decisions.
We are a people who love clean narratives. We want our heroes to be flawless and our victories to be unambiguous. But the Bible refuses to give us that. It gives us real history, with real people, in a real, fallen world. And here in Judges 1, we find the house of Joseph going up against Bethel. Their story is a microcosm of the entire book, a mixture of divinely-given success and pragmatic, human maneuvering. They are promised victory, and God is with them. Yet, they still resort to espionage and cutting a deal with a traitor from inside the enemy camp.
This passage forces us to wrestle with the nature of God's providence and human responsibility. How does God's sovereign blessing interact with our tactical decisions? What does it mean to act in faith when the situation on the ground is complicated? This is not a story about perfect saints executing a perfect plan. It is a story about a faithful God working through imperfect people to accomplish His purposes. And in their messy, compromised victory, we see a reflection of our own struggles and a pointer to the kind of covenantal wisdom we desperately need.
The Text
Likewise the house of Joseph went up against Bethel, and Yahweh was with them. And the house of Joseph spied out Bethel (now the name of the city was formerly Luz). Then the spies saw a man coming out of the city, and they said to him, “Please show us the entrance to the city, and we will treat you with lovingkindness.” So he showed them the entrance to the city, and they struck the city with the edge of the sword, but they let the man and all his family go free. So the man went into the land of the Hittites and built a city and named it Luz which is its name to this day.
(Judges 1:22-26 LSB)
The Foundation of Victory (v. 22)
We begin with the essential declaration that undergirds the entire episode:
"Likewise the house of Joseph went up against Bethel, and Yahweh was with them." (Judges 1:22)
Everything that follows is built on this foundation. The success of the house of Joseph, which includes the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, is not ultimately attributed to their military strategy or their clever use of spies. The decisive factor, the necessary precondition for any victory, is that "Yahweh was with them." This is the consistent testimony of Scripture. When Israel succeeds, it is because God is present with them. When they fail, it is because He has withdrawn His hand on account of their sin. Their military readiness is secondary; their covenant faithfulness is primary.
This phrase, "Yahweh was with them," is a covenantal declaration. It means God was upholding His end of the bargain. He had promised to give them this land, and He was now acting to fulfill that promise. This is not a generic, sentimental presence, as though God were a cosmic good-luck charm. It is the active, engaged presence of a covenant Lord fighting on behalf of His people. Their responsibility was to go up, to act in faith on the basis of this promise. God does not do the fighting for them in a way that allows them to remain inert. He fights through them. He gives the victory, but they must swing the sword.
This is a crucial lesson for the church. All our striving, our strategizing, our programs, and our efforts are utterly futile unless the Lord is with us. And He is with us when we are walking in obedience to His covenant. We are to go up against the Bethels of our age, the strongholds of paganism and unbelief, but we must do so with the confident assurance that our victory is secured not by our own strength, but by His presence.
Pragmatism and Espionage (v. 23-24)
Having established the divine foundation for victory, the narrative immediately pivots to the human means employed.
"And the house of Joseph spied out Bethel (now the name of the city was formerly Luz). Then the spies saw a man coming out of the city, and they said to him, 'Please show us the entrance to the city, and we will treat you with lovingkindness.'" (Judges 1:23-24 LSB)
The fact that Yahweh is with them does not lead them to a foolish presumption. They don't simply march up to the walls and expect them to fall down like Jericho's. Faith is not the enemy of prudence. So they engage in standard military intelligence gathering. They spy out the city. This is the same tactic Joshua used at Jericho, and it is a demonstration of sanctified common sense. God promises the end, victory, but He generally expects us to use the ordinary means He has provided to get there.
The historical note that Bethel was formerly called Luz is significant. Luz means "almond tree," but Bethel means "house of God." This was the place where Jacob had his vision of the ladder to heaven and where God confirmed His covenant with him. For this sacred place to be in the hands of the Canaanites was an abomination. The house of Joseph is not just conquering a piece of real estate; they are reclaiming a site of covenantal history. They are taking back God's house.
Their opportunity comes in the form of a man leaving the city. We are not told his name or his motives. He is simply a man who is willing to betray his own people for the right price. The offer the spies make is striking: "we will treat you with lovingkindness." The word here is chesed. This is a rich, covenantal term. It means loyal love, steadfast faithfulness, covenantal solidarity. It is the word used over and over again to describe God's relationship with Israel. It is the same concept Rahab negotiated for herself and her family in Jericho. She switched her allegiance from the doomed city of Jericho to the covenant people of God, and she was saved on the basis of that covenantal loyalty.
Here, the Israelites are offering to extend a form of this covenantal grace to a pagan man in exchange for his help. They are, in effect, inviting him to switch sides. He can either perish with the idolaters in Bethel, or he can throw in his lot with the people of Yahweh and live. This is a wartime negotiation, and the ethics are clear. The man's loyalty is to a wicked and condemned city. By helping God's people, he is not committing treason against a legitimate authority; he is fleeing a city under divine judgment.
A Compromised Victory (v. 25)
The deal is struck, and the consequences are swift and brutal.
"So he showed them the entrance to the city, and they struck the city with the edge of the sword, but they let the man and all his family go free." (Genesis 1:25 LSB)
The man fulfills his part of the bargain, and the house of Joseph fulfills theirs. They are faithful to their promise, their chesed. They spare the man and his entire household, his federal headship covering his family. This is a picture, however faint, of the gospel. One man's decision brings salvation to his whole house.
But notice the action taken against the city. They "struck the city with the edge of the sword." This is the language of cherem, or holy war. The Canaanite cities were under a divine death sentence because their wickedness had reached its fullness. God was using Israel as His instrument of judgment. This is not a simple land dispute. It is a judicial act of the high King of heaven against a rebellious and perverse culture. To shrink from this reality is to impose our modern, sentimental sensibilities onto the text and to accuse God of injustice. God, as the author of life, has the absolute right to take it. The destruction of Bethel was a righteous act of judgment.
However, the victory is not entirely clean. Unlike at Jericho, where Rahab was incorporated into the people of Israel, this man is simply let go. He is a tool they use and then discard. There is a pragmatic, almost cynical feel to the transaction. They got what they needed from him, and he got what he wanted from them, and they parted ways. This foreshadows the kind of compromises that will eventually cripple Israel throughout the book of Judges.
The Fruit of Treason (v. 26)
The final verse tells us what became of this informant.
"So the man went into the land of the Hittites and built a city and named it Luz which is its name to this day." (Judges 1:26 LSB)
The man takes his life, which he has purchased through his betrayal, and goes off to start over. He goes to the "land of the Hittites," back among the pagans. He does not join Israel. He does not confess faith in Yahweh. He simply escapes the judgment that fell on his neighbors.
And what does he do? He builds a city and names it Luz, the old name for Bethel. This is a profound act. He attempts to replicate the life he had before. He builds a new Luz, a new pagan city, free from the inconvenient claims of Yahweh. He has been saved from the judgment of God, but he has not been saved from his paganism. He is a man who saw the power of God, who benefited from the covenant mercy of God's people, and who promptly turned his back and went back to his old life. He is a picture of the man who receives the seed on rocky ground, who endures for a little while, but when trouble comes, he falls away. He wanted the fire insurance of chesed, but not the Lord of the covenant.
This is a warning to us. It is possible to be adjacent to the work of God, to even be an instrument in it, without ever being transformed by it. This man's story ends not with him in Bethel, the house of God, but in a new Luz, a monument to his old life. The house of Joseph got their city, but a seed of the old paganism was allowed to escape and replant itself elsewhere. This is the story of Judges in a nutshell: partial obedience leading to partial victories, with the roots of future trouble left in the ground.
Conclusion: The Greater Rahab
This brief account is more than just an ancient war story. It is a story about how God works in this fallen world. He works through His covenant people, even when their methods are a bit rough and their motives are mixed. He declares that He is with us, and on that basis, we are to go up and take the territory He has assigned to us.
But the story also provides a stark contrast. We have the informant of Bethel, and we have Rahab of Jericho. Both were traitors to their cities. Both cut a deal with Israel to save their families. But the outcomes were entirely different. Rahab made a confession of faith. She declared that Yahweh, He is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath. She cast her lot entirely with the people of God and was incorporated into the line of the Messiah. She is celebrated in the great hall of faith in Hebrews 11.
The man from Luz made a business transaction. He saved his skin, and that's all. He is a cautionary tale. He shows us that it is possible to have dealings with God's people, to receive mercy from them, and yet to remain unchanged, to go back and build another Luz.
The question for us is this: when we are confronted with the claims of God's kingdom, are we a Rahab or are we the man from Luz? Do we see the coming judgment and flee to the people of God, casting our lot with them completely, confessing that Jesus is Lord? Or do we simply try to cut a deal, to get a little "lovingkindness" to get us out of a jam, while our hearts remain in the land of the Hittites? God is still taking His cities. The gospel is still advancing. And He still offers chesed, covenant mercy, to all who will abandon the city of destruction and come to Him. Let us be sure that when we come, we come all the way, leaving the old Luz behind for good, and taking up our joyful residence in the true Bethel, the house of God, which is the church of the living Christ.