Thus the depletion which the tribe had to
suffer in the struggle with the Canaanites at the beginning of the
period of the judges was the remote cause of the prominence which,
according to 1Chronicles ii., the Bne Hezron afterwards attained in
Judah. The survivors of Simeon also appear to have been forced
back upon these Hezronites in the Negeb; the cities assigned to
them in the Book of Joshua all belong to that region.
*******
Even after the united resistance of the Canaanites had been broken,
each individual community had still enough to do before it could
take firm hold of the spot which it had searched out for itself or
to which it had been assigned. The business of effecting permanent
settlement was just a continuation of the former struggle, only
on a diminished scale; every tribe and every family now fought
for its own land after the preliminary work had been accomplished
by a united effort. Naturally, therefore, the conquest was at first
but an incomplete one. The plain which fringed the coast was
hardly touched; so also the valley of Jezreel with its girdle
of fortified cities stretching from Acco to Bethshean.
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