Judges 1:5

And they found The plural verb is the natural continuation of Judges 1:3.

Adoni-bezek in Bezek The chieftain's name was no doubt taken to mean -lord of Bezek," as though he were called after his capital; but Judges 1:7 at least suggests that Jerusalem was his capital, not Bezek. No proper names in the O.T. are compounded with the name of a place; and by all analogy Adoni-bezek must mean -(the god) Bezek is Lord." A god Bezek, however, is unknown. The double Bezek excites suspicion: in Bezekmay be allowed to stand, because the context requires the name of a place; the error probably lies in the name of the chief. It is difficult to resist the conclusion that Adoni-bezek here is the same person as Adoni-zedek in Joshua 10:1; Joshua 10:3, the head of the Canaanite confederacy which is said to have opposed the Israelite invasion after the capture of Ai. Advancing from Gilgal or Jericho the first stronghold to confront the invaders would be Jerusalem; and by correcting -Adoni-bezek" to Adoni-zedek king of Jerusalem, the form in which Joshua gives the text, we obtain the right situation for Judah's first encounter. The name Adoni-zedek (cf. the Hebrew Adoni-jah and the Phoenician Adoni-eshmun) means Zedek, or rather Ṣedeḳ, is Lord, Zedek being the Canaanite (Phoen.) god Συδέκ (Philo Bybl., Fragm. Hist. Graec.iii. 569); cf. the Canaanite names Ben-ṣedeḳ (Amarna Letters, no. 125, 37 ed. Winckler), Ṣidḳi-milk (Cooke, North-Semitic Inscriptions, p. 349), Melki-ṣedeḳ Genesis 14:18; Psalms 110:4. Probably the Hebrew scribes altered the name in order to introduce a distinction between the two narratives in Jud. and Josh.; -Bezek" suggested itself from the context; and the whole name was given the erroneous meaning -lord of Bezek." The Greek scribes, on the other hand, identified the two names by reading Adoni-bezek both in Josh, and in Jud. (LXX). Another way of accounting for the alteration is proposed by Moore: by changing Adoni-zedek to Adoni-bezek it was possible to give the name a contemptuous twist, -the Lord scatters"; in Aram. bezaḳ= -scatter." The situation of the town Bezek is unknown, but it was probably near Jerusalem, Judges 1:7 b. The Bezek of 1 Samuel 11:8 = the modern Ibzik on the road to Bçsân, 14 m. N.E. of Nâblus, is too far north and outside the range of Judah's operations. Possibly the name has not been preserved correctly; Azekah (Joshua 10:10) is suggested as an improvement (Steuernagel, Einwanderung, p. 85).

the Canaanites and the Perizzites Cf. Judges 1:4; mentioned together in Genesis 13:7; Genesis 34:30 J; both appear in the lists of the seven nations of Canaan, e.g. Deuteronomy 7:1. What the difference was between them is not known; -Perizzites" seems to be a formation from perâzî= -country folk," -inhabitants of unwalled towns"; perhaps the name was given not to a separate tribe, but to the Canaanites who lived in the villages or open country.