The House of Joseph Subdues the Amorites of Aijalon and Shaalbim

The book of Judges 1 catalogs the failures of each tribe to fully drive out the Canaanites from its assigned territory. The tribe of Dan failed especially badly — "the Amorites pressed the people of Dan back into the hill country, for they did not allow them to come down to the plain" (Judges 1:34). But then a brief note records a partial recovery: "The Amorites persisted in dwelling in Mount Heres, in Aijalon, and in Shaalbim, but the hand of the house of Joseph rested heavily on them, and they became subject to forced labor" (Judges 1:35). The "house of Joseph" — the powerful neighboring tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh — was strong enough to do what Dan alone could not, pressing the unconquered Amorite enclaves of the western foothills into corvée labor rather than expelling them. The arrangement preserved the Amorites as a permanent population within the land, sowing the seeds of the spiritual compromise that the rest of Judges would document.

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