where Israel is called a hard-necked people which did not bend under obedience to the commandments of God.
Verses 20-21
Jdg 2:20-21Chastisement of the Rebellious Nation. - Jdg 2:20, Jdg 2:21. On account of this idolatry, which was not only constantly repeated, but continued to grow worse and worse, the anger of the Lord burned so fiercely against Israel, that He determined to destroy no more of the nations which Joshua had left when he died, before the people that had broken His covenant. In order to set forth this divine purpose most distinctly, it is thrown into the form of a sentence uttered by God through the expression וגו ויּאמר. The Lord said, “Because this people has transgressed my covenant, ... I also will no longer keep my covenant promise (Exo 23:23, Exo 23:27., Exo 34:10.), and will no more drive out any of the remaining Canaanites before them” (see Jos 23:13).
Verse 22
The purpose of God in this resolution was “to prove Israel through them (the tribes that were not exterminated), whether they (the Israelites) would keep the way of the Lord to walk therein (cf. Deu 8:2), as their fathers did keep it, or not.” נסּות למען is not dependent upon the verb עזב, as Studer supposes, which yields no fitting sense; nor can the clause be separated from the preceding one, as Bertheau suggests, and connected as a protasis with Jdg 2:23 (this would be a thoroughly unnatural construction, for which Isa 45:4 does not furnish any true parallel); but the clause is attached in the simplest possible manner to the main thought in Jdg 2:20, Jdg 2:21, that is to say, to the words “and He said” in Jdg 2:20 : Jehovah said, i.e., resolved, that He would not exterminate the remaining nations any further, to tempt Israel through them. The plural בּם, in the place of the singular בּהּ, which the foregoing דּרך requires, is to be regarded as a constructio ad sensum, i.e., to be attributed to the fact, that keeping the way of God really consists in observing the commandments of God, and that this was the thought which floated before the writer's mind. The thought expressed in this verse, that Jehovah would not exterminate the Canaanites before Israel any more, to try them whether they would keep His commandments, just as He had previously caused the people whom He brought out of Egypt to wander in the wilderness for forty years with the very same intention (Deu 8:2), is not at variance with the design of God, expressed in Exo 23:29-30, and Deu 7:22, not to exterminate the Canaanites all at once, lest the land should become waste, and the wild beasts multiply therein, nor yet with the motive assigned in Jdg 3:1-2. For the determination not
