Commentary - Judges 3:1-6

Bird's-eye view

This passage serves as a crucial theological hinge for the entire book of Judges. It answers the question of why the conquest under Joshua was left incomplete. The answer is not that God's plan failed, but rather that His plan included leaving behind a set of divinely appointed sparring partners for His people. God sovereignly left these pagan nations in the land for a twofold purpose: first, to train a new generation of Israelites in the realities of holy war, and second, to test their covenantal faithfulness. The tragedy of the passage, and indeed the whole book, is that Israel fails this test spectacularly. Instead of learning to fight God's enemies, they learn to accommodate them, live with them, intermarry with them, and ultimately, worship with them. This section establishes the pattern of compromise that will necessitate the raising up of judges to deliver a people who repeatedly choose slavery to idols over the hard-fought freedom of obedience to Yahweh.

In short, God established a divine boot camp for His people, and this passage describes the obstacle course and the purpose of the training. Israel's subsequent history in the book is a record of their consistent and pathetic failure to run that course. This failure points forward to the necessity of a true Israelite, Jesus Christ, who would face the ultimate test and conquer perfectly on behalf of His people.

Outline

Context In Judges

Coming right after the summary of Israel's initial failures in chapter 1 and the Angel of Yahweh's rebuke in chapter 2, this section in chapter 3 provides the theological framework for the cycles of sin, oppression, repentance, and deliverance that characterize the rest of the book. Chapter 2 established that a new generation arose that "did not know Yahweh or the work that he had done for Israel" (Judges 2:10). This passage explains God's method for dealing with this ignorant and untested generation. He did not abandon them; He put them to the test. The stories of Othniel, Ehud, Deborah, Gideon, and Samson are not disconnected tales of heroism. They are case studies of how God graciously provides deliverers for a people who consistently fail the very test described here in the opening verses of chapter 3. This is the setup for the whole tragic drama.

Key Issues

God's Appointed Adversaries

Modern Christians are often afflicted with a soft and sentimental view of God's purposes. We tend to think that God's plan for us is a life of comfort, ease, and minimal friction. This passage blows that kind of thinking completely out of the water. God's purpose for Israel was not to give them a cushy retirement in the Promised Land. His purpose was to make them into a nation of holy warriors, and you cannot forge warriors in a time of peace. Warriors are forged in war.

So what does God do? He sovereignly and intentionally leaves behind pockets of ferocious, idolatrous enemies. These were not random leftovers. They were divinely appointed instruments of sanctification. They were the whetstone upon which Israel's faith was to be sharpened. They were the resistance in God's gym, designed to build spiritual muscle. God does not want His children to be soft. He wants them to be strong, and strength is only developed by overcoming resistance. The Canaanites, then, were a severe mercy. They were a gift, though they came wrapped in terror and temptation. The great tragedy of Judges is that Israel refused to open the gift. Instead of fighting the Canaanites, they decided to move in with them.

Verse by Verse Commentary

1 Now these are the nations which Yahweh allowed to remain, to test Israel by them (that is, all who had not known any of the wars of Canaan;

The first thing to notice is God's absolute sovereignty. The Canaanites did not remain because Israel's army was too weak or because God's plan had somehow miscarried. Yahweh "allowed to remain," or "left," these nations. This was His deliberate design. The purpose is stated plainly: "to test Israel." The specific group to be tested was the new generation, those who had grown up after the initial, miraculous conquest under Joshua. They had heard the stories, but they had not fought the battles. They were spiritually soft, untested, and living on the fumes of their fathers' faith. God knows that secondhand faith is no faith at all, so He arranged a test to reveal what was truly in their hearts.

2 however, God tested them in order that the generations of the sons of Israel would know war, by learning war, especially those who had not known it formerly).

Here the purpose of the test is clarified. It was a curriculum. They were to "know war, by learning war." This is not about God wanting them to become bloodthirsty militarists. This is about them learning to engage in covenantal warfare according to God's commands and in His strength. The previous generation had seen God miraculously throw down the walls of Jericho and stop the sun in the sky. This new generation needed to learn to fight in the day-to-day grind, to trust God when the odds were not miraculously in their favor. It was a practical education in dependence, courage, and obedience. God was teaching them that the life of faith is not a playground but a battlefield. Peace is the goal, but war is often the means.

3 These nations are: the five lords of the Philistines and all the Canaanites and the Sidonians and the Hivites who lived in Mount Lebanon, from Mount Baal-hermon as far as Lebo-hamath.

This is the roll call of the appointed adversaries. It is a list of Israel's future troubles. Each of these groups would become a thorn in Israel's side at some point in their history. The Philistines would be a persistent enemy down to the time of David. The Canaanites represented the allure of pagan sensuality and idolatry. The Sidonians represented the temptation of worldly wealth and commerce. This was not just a military threat; it was a spiritual and ideological threat. These were the specific idolatries that Israel was supposed to confront and eradicate, but which would instead confront and seduce them.

4 And they were for testing Israel, to know if they would obey the commandments of Yahweh, which He had commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses.

This verse gets to the heart of the matter. The military training was the means to a greater end. The ultimate test was one of obedience. Would they keep the commandments? Specifically, would they obey the commands in Deuteronomy to drive out the inhabitants of the land, to make no treaty with them, and to show them no mercy (Deut 7:1-5)? The presence of the Canaanites was a constant, standing test. Every day, an Israelite would wake up and see a pagan high place on a nearby hill. The question was, what was he going to do about it? Was he going to obey God and tear it down, or was he going to ignore it, and eventually, perhaps, go up and see what all the fuss was about? The test was designed to reveal their heart's allegiance.

5 Now the sons of Israel lived among the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites;

Here is the first step in their catastrophic failure. The command was to drive them out. The result was that Israel "lived among" them. The Hebrew is emphatic; they settled down right in the middle of them. They moved into the same neighborhoods. They became neighbors. This is the classic picture of spiritual compromise. They were supposed to be a distinct and separate people, a holy nation. Instead, they chose coexistence. They traded the hard work of eradication for the ease of accommodation. They stopped seeing the Canaanites as a mortal threat to their covenantal life and started seeing them as just another group of people with a different lifestyle.

6 and they took their daughters for themselves as wives and gave their own daughters to their sons and served their gods.

This is the inevitable result of the previous verse's compromise. Cohabitation leads to collaboration, which leads to capitulation. First you live with them, then you marry them, then you worship with them. The command against intermarriage was explicit (Deut 7:3) because God knew exactly where it would lead. It is impossible to join yourself in the most intimate of human covenants with an idolater and not have it corrupt your own worship. The family is the basic unit of society, and by polluting their families with paganism, they polluted the entire nation. The final clause is the tragic conclusion: "and served their gods." They failed the test utterly. The very thing they were supposed to destroy ended up destroying them.

Application

The principle of this passage is timeless. God has not called us to a life of ease. He has called us to a life of faithful warfare. He has sovereignly left "Canaanites" in our lives, in our culture, and in our own hearts. These are the trials, temptations, and worldly philosophies that constantly press in on us. They are there to test us, to teach us to fight, and to reveal whether we will obey God's commands or compromise with the world.

The great temptation for the modern church is the same one Israel faced: to simply "live among" the Canaanites. We are tempted to stop seeing secularism, sexual confusion, and rank idolatry as enemies to be fought and instead see them as neighbors to be tolerated and accommodated. We want to be seen as nice. We want to avoid conflict. This leads directly to intermarriage, being unequally yoked in our thinking, our business practices, and our relationships. And the end of that road is always the same: we end up serving their gods. We start to value what they value, love what they love, and worship what they worship, whether that idol is comfort, security, sexual expression, or personal autonomy.

The call of this passage is to pick up our swords. It is a call to recognize that we are at war. We must refuse to compromise. We must, by the grace of God and in the power of the Spirit, drive the Canaanites out of our hearts, our homes, and our churches. Our failures in this fight should not lead us to despair, but rather drive us to Christ, the only one who fought perfectly and won the decisive victory. Because He has conquered, we can now fight, not for victory, but from victory.