Catholic Commentary
Judah's Campaign into the Hill Country and Hebron
9After that, the children of Judah went down to fight against the Canaanites who lived in the hill country, and in the South, and in the lowland.10Judah went against the Canaanites who lived in Hebron. (The name of Hebron before that was Kiriath Arba.) They struck Sheshai, Ahiman, and Talmai.
Judges 1:9–10 describes Judah's military campaigns across Canaan's three geographical zones and the capture of Hebron from three Anakim giants—Sheshai, Ahiman, and Talmai—the same figures who had terrorized Israelite spies forty years earlier. This victory vindicates Caleb's earlier faith and demonstrates that the new generation accomplishes what the fearful wilderness generation could not.
The giants who once made Israel feel like grasshoppers are conquered not by their shrinking, but by Judah's willingness to descend into contested terrain and fight them by name.
Judges 1:9 — Descending into Three Terrains
The phrase "went down to fight" is geographically precise and theologically loaded. Judah descends from the initial battle site in the central highlands toward three clearly delineated zones of Canaan: the har (hill country), the Negev (the southern semi-arid steppe), and the Shephelah (the low foothills or "lowland" between the central ridge and the coastal plain). This tripartite division reflects the standard biblical geography of the land allotted to Judah in Joshua 15, showing that the narrator is deliberately tracing the fulfillment—even if partial—of that allotment. The "going down" is not a spiritual descent but a literal topographical one, and yet the image is significant: the work of dispossessing entrenched evil requires engagement, movement, and a willingness to enter contested territory. Inertia is not an option in the logic of the conquest narrative.
The breadth of the campaign across all three zones indicates both ambition and the size of the task. No single victory suffices; Judah must fight across varied landscapes, each with its own tactical and spiritual challenges. This verse functions as a narrative summary that verse 10 (and the verses that follow, through v. 21) will unpack in detail.
Judges 1:10 — The Taking of Hebron
Hebron is no ordinary city. Its earlier name, Kiriath Arba ("City of Four," possibly a reference to four clans of Anakim or to the patriarch Arba), anchors it in the pre-Israelite past and signals its formidable, ancient character (cf. Joshua 14:15; 15:13). The parenthetical note "(The name of Hebron before that was Kiriath Arba)" serves the same literary function it did in Joshua 14:15—reminding the reader that Israel is reclaiming what was once held by a powerful giant-race, the Anakim.
The three defenders named—Sheshai, Ahiman, and Talmai—are the same sons of Anak mentioned in Numbers 13:22, where they struck such fear into the ten faithless spies that the men of Israel declared themselves "like grasshoppers" before them. Their reappearance here is not incidental: these names are a deliberate callback to the crisis of faith at Kadesh-Barnea. What the fearful generation could not do, Judah now accomplishes. The conquest of Hebron thus becomes a vindication of the faith of Caleb (cf. Joshua 14:6–14), who had originally asked for and received Hebron as his inheritance precisely because he "wholly followed the LORD." The narrator credits the broader tribe of Judah here (compare Joshua 15:14, which attributes the same victory specifically to Caleb), suggesting either a composite tradition or the understanding that Caleb's clan acted as part of the broader tribal movement.
Typological and Spiritual Senses
Hebron carries extraordinary covenantal weight: Abraham camped at the oaks of Mamre near Hebron (Genesis 13:18), Sarah died and was buried at Machpelah in Hebron (Genesis 23), and David would later be anointed king there (2 Samuel 2:4). The capture of this city by Judah, the royal tribe, thus carries a forward-looking resonance—it prepares the very ground on which the Davidic covenant will be inaugurated. Patristic and medieval interpreters, following Origen's allegorical method, read the "hill country" as the seat of the higher faculties of the soul, the deep places where spiritual warfare is most fiercely contested. The descent of Judah into the hills becomes an image of the soul's necessary engagement with its deepest interior struggles—those besetting sins and entrenched spiritual enemies that dwell in the "high places" of pride and self-sufficiency.
Catholic tradition brings several distinctive lenses to bear on this passage. First, the typological reading of Judah: from the earliest Fathers, Judah's preeminence in the conquest narrative was read as a foreshadowing of Christ, the "Lion of the tribe of Judah" (Revelation 5:5), who leads the definitive campaign against sin and death. Origen, in his Homilies on Judges, treats the individual battles of the tribes as figures of the soul's warfare against vice, with Judah—meaning "praise"—signifying the soul animated by the love of God, the most effective weapon in spiritual combat.
Second, the significance of Hebron in Catholic typology is substantial. As the burial place of the patriarchs (the Cave of Machpelah) and the site of God's covenant with Abraham, Hebron represents the continuity of salvation history. The Catechism teaches that the Old Covenant is not abrogated but fulfilled (CCC §121–122), and Judah's reclaiming of this patriarchal city dramatizes how each generation must actively re-appropriate the inheritance of faith—it does not pass automatically.
Third, the defeat of the sons of Anak speaks to the Church's consistent teaching on spiritual warfare (CCC §§2850–2854). The giants who once paralyzed Israel with fear are conquered not by human might alone but by faithful obedience to the divine mandate. St. John Chrysostom notes that the enemies of God's people appear most terrifying precisely when our faith is weakest. Caleb's prior faith (Numbers 14:24) is what made the victory at Hebron possible—a reminder that personal acts of courageous faith open corridors of grace for the entire community of the Church.
The geography of Judges 1:9–10 offers a pointed challenge to the contemporary Catholic: the inheritance of faith must be actively fought for, terrain by terrain. The hill country, the Negev, and the Shephelah represent the varied domains of a Christian life—the lofty interior life of prayer, the arid stretches of spiritual dryness, and the contested lowlands of everyday moral life. None of these zones secures itself.
The three sons of Anak—those giants who once made Israel feel like "grasshoppers"—are a precise image for the besetting sins and cultural pressures that loom large in contemporary Catholic life: the intimidating scale of secularism, the entrenched power of habitual sin, the sheer size of what feels unconquerable. Judah's example is instructive: they did not renegotiate the terms of the battle or wait for the giants to shrink. They engaged.
Practically, this passage invites Catholics to identify the specific "Hebrons" in their spiritual landscape—those ancient strongholds of sin, fear, or unbelief that have a name and a history—and to engage them with the same focused, named, intentional warfare that Judah brought to Sheshai, Ahiman, and Talmai. Caleb's faith made the victory possible. Our prior acts of courageous trust in God prepare the ground for graces we cannot yet see.
Commentary