The list of destroyed and surviving Canaanite cities at Judges 1:17-36 is an account of the failures and successes of the military campaigns of the Israelites in their attempt to conquer Canaan. While the Book of Joshua portrays complete victory, Judges presents the tribes which were to become the western half of the Kingdom of Israel as having several failures. In each of these cases, the book of Judges says that the tribes later subjugated the Canaanites into forced labour.
According to the Bible, God inflicted the later tribulations in Judges upon the Israelites partially because they failed to completely extinguish the Canaanite race despite his somewhat genocidal command elsewhere to the contrary. According to modern textual criticism the discrepancy with the picture of victory that Joshua portrays is down to the use of different sources. The less pious and more realistic presence of failures leading to the text being considered more historically reliable, and from a potentially earlier, less censured, source.
The list does not consider the tribes who became the eastern half of the Kingdom of Israel, but the western part of the Kingdom of Israel are only described as failing, and the only successes are by those tribes which became the Kingdom of Judah. In particular, even where Judah fails, an excuse is given - the occupants had chariots. Hence, many biblical critics see the list as biased, and partly deliberate propaganda, by an author hailing from the Kingdom of Judah.
One curious feature of the list is that Jerusalem is described as having not been conquered and containing Jebusites to this day. This is somewhat in contrast to the slightly earlier Judges 1:8, which says that everyone there was killed and the city burnt to the ground. Another unusual feature is that it lists every single tribe whose lands are west of the Jordan, except Levi, the holy tribe, and Issachar, who apparently had no failures, but also no successes worthy of mention.
Famous quotes containing the words list of, list, surviving, destroyed and/or cities:
“Shea—they call him Scholar Jack—
Went down the list of the dead.
Officers, seamen, gunners, marines,
The crews of the gig and yawl,
The bearded man and the lad in his teens,
Carpenters, coal-passers—all.”
—Joseph I. C. Clarke (1846–1925)
“Modern tourist guides have helped raised tourist expectations. And they have provided the natives—from Kaiser Wilhelm down to the villagers of Chichacestenango—with a detailed and itemized list of what is expected of them and when. These are the up-to- date scripts for actors on the tourists’ stage.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)
“The misery of the middle-aged woman is a grey and hopeless thing, born of having nothing to live for, of disappointment and resentment at having been gypped by consumer society, and surviving merely to be the butt of its unthinking scorn.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“By his mere quiet power, on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began. And having begun He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“How far men go for the material of their houses! The inhabitants of the most civilized cities, in all ages, send into far, primitive forests, beyond the bounds of their civilization, where the moose and bear and savage dwell, for their pine boards for ordinary use. And, on the other hand, the savage soon receives from cities iron arrow-points, hatchets, and guns, to point his savageness with.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)