Judges 3:1-31

The Story of the Judges. Othniel. Ehud. Shamgar

1-6. Israel’s actual relations with the Canaanites.

1. Wars of Canaan] i.e. those waged by Joshua, after whose death (Judges 2:21) the career of victory was made to cease by Jehovah.

2. A third reason for the survival of the heathen in Canaan, in addition to those given in Judges 2:1; and in. Judges 2:22; Judges 3:1.

3. Philistines] see Intro. § 5. The Philistines occupied the lowland in the SW. Their five cities formed a confederacy: see Judges 16:5, etc., and 1 Samuel 6:16. At the death of Samuel their power extends far into central Palestine (1 Samuel 31:10). All the Canaanites] in the more restricted sense, the lowlanders of the SW. bordering on the Philistines. Hivites] read ’Hittites’: see on Genesis 10:15-19. Baal-hermon] In the similar passage in Joshua we read ’Baal-Gad under Hermon’ (Judges 13:5), a place on the W. side of Hermon. The entering in of Hamath] Hamath was a powerful city of the Hittites on the Orontes (modern Hama). The ’entrance’ to it is the hollow country between Lebanon and anti-Lebanon, on the plain at the N. end of Lebanon: cp. 2 Samuel 8:9; 1 Kings 8:65; Amos 6:14, where it is regarded as the true northern frontier of Israel.

5. See on Judges 1:1-4; Judges 3:3. To these six ’nations’ of Canaan the Girgashites are often added.

6. Cp. Exodus 34:16; Nehemiah 13:25.