Judges 1:30

Study note

Setting — The narrator records the military outcome for the tribe of Zebulun during the post-Joshua settlement period.

The words — The phrase לֹא הוֹרִישׁ (lo' ho'rish) literally means "did not dispossess" or "did not drive out." This verb marks the tribe's explicit failure to remove the local population from Kitron and Nahalol.

The thread — This recorded failure follows the same pattern documented for Ephraim at Gezer and Asher at multiple northern cities (Judges 1:29, 1:31). The location Nahalol corresponds to Nahalal, which appears in the tribal allotment list at Joshua 19:15, while Kitron is absent from that passage.

Why it lands — The text states that Canaanites remained and served as forced laborers, establishing a concrete historical reality rather than a theological ideal. It asks the reader to track how incomplete conquests directly produce lasting social and economic subjugation.

Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.