What does Judges 1:26 mean?
The people of the tribe of Ephraim succeed in destroying the Canaanite people of the city of Bethel/Luz (Judges 1:22–25). They almost obey God's command to utterly dedicate the inhabitants to destruction (Deuteronomy 20:16–18). Instead, they let one man and his family go free in exchange for his help in getting them into Bethel to destroy it.The result is found in this verse. The man travels to live with the Hittite people and builds a new city. He calls this city Luz, after the old city. He succeeds in replacing a Canaanite city destroyed by the Israelites with a new one of the same name. This is a direct result of the Israelite's failure to obey God's command to thoroughly cleanse the Promised Land of all Canaanite influence.
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.
