In Judges, chapter one, verse twenty-eight, Joshua had destroyed many of the Canaanites. Yet after his death, a considerable number remained in the land as described in verse one, verses twenty-eight through thirty and thirty-two to thirty-three, thirty-five, of the same chapter, respectively. God had commanded Israel to drive out the Canaanites entirely because of their corrupt and sensual form of religion. Israel’s ultimate failure to do this caused them to compromise with the Canaanites and brought ruin and defeat to the people of God.
Most of the tribes of Israel failed to entirely remove the Canaanites from their allotted territories, as explained in verses seventeen through twenty-one. The listing of these tribes and the places where Canaanites remained living in the land is in this same chapter. The Israelites seem to have lacked the will or the trust in God to destroy the Canaanites as God had commanded in Deuteronomy twenty sixteen through eighteen. Here, Israel could have destroyed the Canaanites, eventually. However, they did not get defeated in battle: they just stopped short of a complete victory.
The people of Israel willfully chose not to follow through on God’s command. As the nation took root, the people thrived. They began to outnumber the Canaanites in some places. When they became strong enough to purge evil Canaanite culture from the land, they chose to enslave the people. They used the Canaanites for labor instead of destroying them. Harsh though this may seem, later chapters show the terrible suffering Israel experienced as a result.
What made Israel incorporate this activity among themselves? Did they get the idea from their experience of being in bondage all those years with the Egyptians in Egypt? The decision to develop such an operation was not God’s plan but the scheme of man.
When followers of God decide not to follow His way in obedience, they set themselves up for failure. Believers are supposed to impact lives in the ways of the Lord and not the opposite.