Judges 2:20-Judges 3:4 - The Lord Allows The Nations To Stay In Order To Test His People
20 And the anger of the LORD was hot against Israel, and he said, Because these people transgress my covenant which I commanded their fathers and do not hearken unto my voice; 21 neither will I drive out any longer from before them any of these Gentiles which Joshua left when he died, 22 that through them I may prove Israel, whether they will keep the way of the LORD by walking therein as their fathers kept it, or not. 23 Therefore, the LORD left those Gentiles, without driving them out hastily; neither did he deliver them into the hand of Joshua.
1 Now these are the Gentiles which the LORD left, to prove Israel with them, even as many of Israel as had not known all the wars of Canaan; 2 he left them only that the generations of the sons of Israel might know, and to teach them war, only for those that had known nothing before: 3 namely, five cardinals of the Philistines and all the Canaanites and the Sidonians and the Hivites that dwelt in Mount Lebanon, from Mount Baalhermon unto the entering in of Hamath. 4 These, therefore, were left to prove Israel by them, to know whether they would hearken unto the commandments of the LORD, which he had commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses.