What does Judges 1:23 mean?
The "house of Joseph" is a reference to the tribe of Ephraim, one of Joseph's two sons (Genesis 48:1–6). The other is Manasseh, who will be noted later in this passage (Judges 1:27).Ephraim has come up with a plan to conquer the city of Bethel, known to the Canaanites as Luz. They will follow the pattern set by Israel's destruction of the city of Jericho with its enormous walls. That plan began by sending spies to Jericho. Ephraim does the same, sending a group to scout out Bethel/Luz. This plan has a fatal flaw, however: it disobeys God's command to eliminate all the wicked Canaanites (Deuteronomy 20:16–18).
Judges 1:21–26 follows a long description of Judah's conquest with reports on two other tribes and their attempts to drive out the Canaanites from their territories. The tribe of Benjamin fails to remove the Jebusites from Jerusalem and so the Jebusites remained living among the people. Scouts from the tribe of Ephraim, here called "the house of Joseph," unwisely agree to allow one citizen of the Canaanite city of Bethel, also known as Luz, to live in exchange for providing them a way into the city. That man starts a new Canaanite city with the same name.
Judges 1 summarizes the early efforts of the tribes of Israel to drive the Canaanites from the land or to destroy them entirely (Deuteronomy 7:1–5; 9:4). The process starts well with a string of successes by Judah and Simeon in the south. Then the news turns sour as one tribe after another is said to have failed to drive the Canaanites out of their allotted territories. Instead, they occupy certain territories, often allowing inhabitants of the land to live among them.
