This second list of foreign peoples adds more names and emphasizes the fact that the Israelites lived among people who did not serve the LORD. This is part of the important background leading up to the judges’ episodes.

So the people of Israel dwelt among …: So renders well the Hebrew waw conjunction, since it introduces a summary statement here. For the people of Israel, see verse 1.1. The Hebrew verb for dwelt means “inhabit” or “live” (see verse 1.9), though Good News Translation and New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh emphasize the fact that the Israelites “settled” there. The preposition among seems crucial, since it was this cohabitation that provoked the LORD’s anger (see verse 1.29). Contemporary English Version changes the word order in this sentence to say that these other peoples “lived all around them [the Israelites],” perhaps trying to express the idea that the Israelites are surrounded.

For the Canaanites, see verse 1.1; the Hittites, verse 1.26; the Amorites, verse 1.34; the Perizzites, verse 1.4; the Hivites, verse 3.3; and the Jebusites, verse 1.21. There seems to be no importance to the order here, though it is worth noting that the Jebusites, the original inhabitants of Jerusalem, are listed last.

Quoted with permission from Zogbo, Lynell and Ogden, Graham S. A Handbook on Judges. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2019. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .