1. Judges 1:21 (ESV)
  2. Exposition

Who is to blame for the failure to drive out the Jebusites?

Judges 1:21 (ESV)

21 But the people of Benjamin did not drive out the Jebusites who lived in Jerusalem, so the Jebusites have lived with the people of Benjamin in Jerusalem to this day.

Joshua 15:63 attributes the failure to dispossess the Jebusites in Jerusalem to Judah, but here the same failure is blamed on Benjamin. The blame is actually Benjamin’s, because they really had to do nothing more than reap the harvest that had been prepared by Judah and Simeon Joshua 15:8). They merely had to find and destroy the Jebusite hideouts and then settle down in Jerusalem themselves, but they probably never even made a serious attempt to do this. As a result the Jebusites soon had the city rebuilt and refortified. They thus continued to make their home within the territory of Benjamin, and Jerusalem remained a non-Israelite city (see Judges 19:11–12) till the time of David (2 Samuel 5:6–7).1