Judges 1 · a question people ask
"Judah took Gaza… Ashkelon… and Ekron" (1:18). Then why are the Philistines there later?
The Bible tells of these cities in several places, best read side by side. Here, "Judah took Gaza with its border, and Ashkelon with its border, and Ekron with its border" (1:18). The very next verse says, "The LORD was with Judah, and drove out the inhabitants of the hill country; for he could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron" (1:19). Before this, the LORD had named "the Gazites, and the Ashdodites, the Ashkelonites, the Gittites, and the Ekronites" among "the land that still remains" (Joshua 13:2-3). After this, Judges lists "the five lords of the Philistines" among the nations "the LORD left, to test Israel by them" (3:1, 3:3), and in Samson's day the men of Judah say, "Don’t you know that the Philistines are rulers over us?" (15:11). The text doesn't say how long Judah held these cities or how they fit together, and it doesn't reconcile them. Joshua 15's section Given, and not yet held looks at the same cities in Judah's list.
The verses
“Also Judah took Gaza with its border, and Ashkelon with its border, and Ekron with its border. The LORD was with Judah, and drove out the inhabitants of the hill country; for he could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.”
““This is the land that still remains: all the regions of the Philistines, and all the Geshurites; from the Shihor, which is before Egypt, even to the border of Ekron northward, which is counted as Canaanite; the five lords of the Philistines; the Gazites, and the Ashdodites, the Ashkelonites, the Gittites, and the Ekronites; also the Avvim,”
“Now these are the nations which the LORD left, to test Israel by them, even as many as had not known all the wars of Canaan; only that the generations of the children of Israel might know, to teach them war, at least those who knew nothing of it before: the five lords of the Philistines, all the Canaanites, the Sidonians, and the Hivites who lived on Mount Lebanon, from Mount Baal Hermon to the entrance of Hamath.”
“Then three thousand men of Judah went down to the cave in Etam’s rock, and said to Samson, “Don’t you know that the Philistines are rulers over us? What then is this that you have done to us?” He said to them, “As they did to me, so I have done to them.””