Judges 1 · a question people ask
The man who showed the way into Bethel was let go with his family (1:25). Should he have been?
The chapter doesn't judge it. The watchers promised, "Please show us the entrance into the city, and we will deal kindly with you" (1:24) (tap kindly); "they struck the city with the edge of the sword; but they let the man and all his family go" (1:25). Other passages stand beside it. Rahab asked the spies at Jericho, "deal kindly with my father’s house" (Joshua 2:12), and they promised, "we will deal kindly and truly with you" (Joshua 2:14); she and her father's household were saved alive (Joshua 6:25). Moses had said of the peoples of the land, "You shall make no covenant with them, nor show mercy to them" (Deuteronomy 7:2). The two stories also differ. Rahab said, "the LORD your God, he is God in heaven above, and on earth beneath" (Joshua 2:11), and "She lives in the middle of Israel to this day" (Joshua 6:25); the man from Bethel "went into the land of the Hittites, built a city, and called its name Luz" (1:26). The chapter records what was promised and kept, and doesn't say whether it was right; the question is left open here too.
The verses
“The watchers saw a man come out of the city, and they said to him, “Please show us the entrance into the city, and we will deal kindly with you.” He showed them the entrance into the city, and they struck the city with the edge of the sword; but they let the man and all his family go. The man went into the land of the Hittites, built a city, and called its name Luz, which is its name to this day.”
“But Rahab the prostitute, her father’s household, and all that she had, Joshua saved alive. She lives in the middle of Israel to this day, because she hid the messengers whom Joshua sent to spy out Jericho.”
“When the LORD your God brings you into the land where you go to possess it, and casts out many nations before you—the Hittite, the Girgashite, the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite—seven nations greater and mightier than you; and when the LORD your God delivers them up before you, and you strike them, then you shall utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them, nor show mercy to them.”