Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch Old Testament Commentary

Like Judah, so also ("they also," referring back to Jdg 1:2, Jdg 1:3) did the house of Joseph (Ephraim and western Manasseh) renew the hostilities with the Canaanites who were left in their territory after the death of Joshua. The children of Joseph went up against Bethel, and Jehovah was with them, so that they were able to conquer the city. Bethel had indeed been assigned to the tribe of Benjamin (Jos 18:22), but it was situated on the southern boundary of the tribe-land of Ephraim (Jos 16:2; Jos 18:13); so that the tribe of Joseph could not tolerate the Canaanites in this border town, if it would defend its own territory against them, and purge it entirely of them. This is a sufficient explanation of the fact that this one conquest is mentioned, and this only, without there being any necessity to seek for the reason, as Bertheau does, in the circumstance that the town of Bethel came into such significant prominence in the later history of Israel, and attained the same importance in many respects in relation to the northern tribes, as that which Jerusalem attained in relation to the southern. For the fact that nothing more is said about the other conquests of the children of Joseph, may be explained simply enough on the supposition that they did not succeed in rooting out the Canaanites from the other fortified towns in their possessions; and therefore there was nothing to record about any further conquests, as the result of their hostilities was merely this, that they did not drive the Canaanites out of the towns named in Jdg 1:27, Jdg 1:29, but simply made them tributary. יתירוּ, they had it explored, or spied out. תּוּר is construed with בּ here, because the spying laid hold, as it were, of its object. Bethel, formerly Luz, now Beitin: see at Gen 28:19 and Jos 7:2.