Judges 2:16-Judges 3:6 - The Lord Raises Up Judges

¹⁶ The Lord raised up leaders who delivered them from these robbers. ¹⁷ But they did not obey their leaders. Instead they prostituted themselves to other gods and worshiped them. They quickly turned aside from the path their ancestors had walked. Their ancestors had obeyed the Lord's commands, but they did not. ¹⁸ When the Lord raised up leaders for them, the Lord was with each leader and delivered the people from their enemies while the leader remained alive. The Lord felt sorry for them when they cried out in agony because of what their harsh oppressors did to them. ¹⁹ When a leader died, the next generation would again act more wickedly than the previous one. They would follow after other gods, worshiping them and bowing down to them. They did not give up their practices or their stubborn ways.

²⁰ The Lord was furious with Israel. He said, "This nation has violated the terms of the agreement I made with their ancestors by disobeying me. ²¹ So I will no longer remove before them any of the nations that Joshua left unconquered when he died. ²² Joshua left those nations to test Israel. I wanted to see whether or not the people would carefully walk in the path marked out by the Lord, as their ancestors were careful to do." ²³ This is why the Lord permitted these nations to remain and did not conquer them immediately; he did not hand them over to Joshua.

¹ These were the nations the Lord permitted to remain so he could use them to test Israel -- he wanted to test all those who had not experienced battle against the Canaanites. ² He left those nations simply because he wanted to teach the subsequent generations of Israelites, who had not experienced the earlier battles, how to conduct holy war. ³ These were the nations: the five lords of the Philistines, all the Canaanites, the Sidonians, and the Hivites living in Mount Lebanon, from Mount Baal Hermon to Lebo-Hamath. ⁴ They were left to test Israel, so the Lord would know if his people would obey the commands he gave their ancestors through Moses. ⁵ The Israelites lived among the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. ⁶ They took the Canaanites' daughters as wives and gave their daughters to the Canaanites; they worshiped their gods as well.