John Gill Commentary Judges 1

Now after the death of Joshua
With the account of which the preceding book is concluded, and therefore this very properly follows after that; though Epiphanius ^F2 places the book of Job between them:

it came to pass that the children of Israel asked the Lord ;
that is, the heads of them who gathered together at Shiloh, where the tabernacle was; and standing before the high priest, either Eleazar, or rather Phinehas his son, Eleazar being in all probability dead, inquired by Urim and Thummim:

saying, who shall go up for us against the Canaanites first, to fight
against them ?
For they had no commander in chief, Joshua leaving no successor, though the Samaritan Chronicle ^F3 pretends he did; one Abel, a son of Caleb's brother, of the tribe of Judah, on whom the lot fell, out of twelve of the nine tribes and a half, to whom Joshua delivered the government of the nation, and crowned him. But this inquiry was not for any man to go before them all as their generalissimo, but to know what tribe should first go up, and they were desirous of having the mind of God in it, when they might expect to succceed;

Which to do, at their first setting out, would not only be a great encouragement to them to go on, but strike dread and terror into their enemies; and this is to be understood of the Canaanites who remained unsubdued, that dwelt among them, and in cities, which though divided to them by lot, they were not in the possession of; and these being troublesome neighbours to them, and besides the Israelites daily increasing, needed more room and more cities to occupy, and more land to cultivate.

FOOTNOTES:

• F2: De Mensur. & Ponder. c. 13.
• F3: Apud Hottinger. Smegma, p. 522.

And the Lord said
By an articulate voice, which it is probable was the usual way of answering by Urim and Thummim:

Judah shall go up ;
not Judah in person, who was long ago dead, but the tribe of Judah; it was the will of the Lord that that tribe should engage first with the Canaanites, being the principal one, and the most numerous, powerful, and valiant, and perhaps had the greatest number of Canaanites among them; and who succeeding, would inspire the other tribes with courage, and fill their enemies with a panic:

behold, I have delivered the land into his hands ;
that part of it which belonged to that tribe as yet unsubdued, the conquest of which they are assured of for their encouragement.

And Judah said unto Simeon his brother
The men of the tribe of Judah said to those of the tribe of Simeon, they being not only brethren by father's and mother's side, which was not the case of all the sons of Jacob, but their possessions and inheritances lay near together; and indeed those of Simeon were within the inheritance of the tribe of Judah, (Joshua 19:1); so that as they lived in great nearness and familiarity with each other, their interests were closely united together:

come up with me into my lot, that we may fight against the Canaanites ;
conjunctly: the meaning is, that the tribe of Simeon, as many of their warlike men as could, would come and join their forces with those of the tribe of Judah, in order to reduce such cities, in the lot of that tribe, the Canaanites as yet were in the possession of:

and I likewise will go with thee into thy lot :
the cities being conquered which were in the lot, of the tribe of Judah, that tribe proposed to bring their united forces into the lot of the tribe of Simeon, and reduce such cities as were in that lot:

so Simeon went with him :
the tribe of Simeon agreed to the proposal, and went along with the tribe of Judah against their common enemy.

And Judah went up
Simeon being along with him, from the southern parts of the land, where they dwelt, and went more northward towards Jerusalem, and which therefore is called a going up.

and the Lord delivered the Canaanites and Perizzites into their hands :
into the hands of Judah and Simeon: the Canaanites here is not the common name of the seven nations, but the name of one of those nations, distinguished from the rest, as here from the Perizzites, who otherwise were also Canaanites; and both these, at least many of them, dwelt in those parts, and were subdued by the united forces of Judah and Simeon, whereby the Lord's promise was fulfilled, (Judges 1:2).

and they slew of them in Bezek ten thousand men :
that is, in and about Bezek, first and last, in the course of this war, as after related. Jerom says ^F4 there were two villages of this name in his time near one another, seven miles from Neapolis, as you go to Scythopolis; and our countryman Mr. Sandys ^F5 says, that when they departed from Bethlehem, bending their course from the mountains of Judea lying west from it, near to which, on the side of the opposite hill, they passed a little village called Bezek, as he took it, two miles from Bethsur, see (1 Samuel 11:8).

FOOTNOTES:

• F4: De loc. Heb. fol. 89. H.
• F5: Travels, p. 142. Ed. 5th.

And they found Adonibezek in Bezek
Who was king of, the place, and whose name signifies lord of Bezek; not that they took him there, for he is afterwards said to make his escape from thence, but here he was when they came against that city, and into which they rushed upon him, and fell upon him as follows:

and they fought against him ;
entering the city with their forces:

and they slew the Canaanites and the Perizzites :
that were in it, or about it, even to the number of ten thousand, as before related, (Judges 1:4) .