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Askelon (Ashkulân), which is five hours to the north of Gaza; and lastly Ekron, the most northerly of the five towns of the Philistines, the present Akîr (see at Jos 13:3). The other two, Ashdod and Gath, do not appear to have been conquered at that time. And even those that were conquered, the Judaeans were unable to hold long. In the time of Samson they were all of them in the hands of the Philistines again (see Jdg 14:19; Jdg 16:1.; 1Sa 5:10, etc.). - In Jdg 1:19 we have a brief summary of the results of the contests for the possession of the land. “Jehovah was with Judah;” and with His help they took possession of the mountains. And they did nothing more; “for the inhabitants of the plain they were unable to exterminate, because they had iron chariots.” הורישׁ has two different meanings in the two clauses: first (ויּרשׁ), to seize upon a possession which has been vacated by the expulsion or destruction of its former inhabitants; and secondly (להורישׁ, with the accusative, of the inhabitants), to drive or exterminate them out of their possessions-a meaning which is derived from the earlier signification of making it an emptied possession (see Exo 34:24; Num 32:21, etc.). “The mountain” here includes the south-land (the Negeb), as the only distinction is between mountains and plain. “The valley” is the shephelah (Jdg 1:9). להורישׁ לא, he was not (able) to drive out. The construction may be explained from the fact that לא is to be taken independently here as in Amo 6:10, in the same sense in which אין before the infinitive is used in later writings (2Ch 5:11; Est 4:2; Est 8:8; Ecc 3:14 : see Ges. §132-3, anm. 1; Ewald, §237, e.). On the iron chariots, i.e., the chariots tipped with iron, see at Jos 17:16. -  To this there is appended, in v. 20, the statement that “they gave Hebron unto Caleb,” etc., which already occurred in Jos 15:13-14, and was there explained; and also in Jdg 1:12 the remark, that the Benjaminites did not drive out the Jebusite who dwelt in Jerusalem, which is so far in place here, that it shows, on the one hand, that the children of Judah did not bring Jerusalem into the undisputed possession of the Israelites through this conquest, and, on the other hand, that it was not their intention to diminish the inheritance of Benjamin by the conquest of Jerusalem, and they had not taken the city for themselves. For further remarks, see at Jdg 1:8.
The hostile attacks of the other tribes upon the Canaanites who remained in the land are briefly summed up in Jdg 1:22-36. Of these the taking of Bethel is more fully described in Jdg 1:22-26.