The Seven Phoenician Coastal Cities Asher Could Not Drive Out

Judges 1:31-32 catalogs Asher's complete failure to dispossess the Phoenician coastal cities of its tribal allotment: "Neither did Asher drive out the inhabitants of Accho, nor the inhabitants of Zidon, nor of Ahlab, nor of Achzib, nor of Helbah, nor of Aphik, nor of Rehob: But the Asherites dwelt among the Canaanites, the inhabitants of the land: for they did not drive them out." The seven named cities span the entire coastal corridor from Acco northward past Tyre into Phoenicia proper — territory where Israelite settlement remained perpetually marginal next to the entrenched Canaanite urban civilization.

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