Joshua 17:13
Yet it came to pass, when the children of Israel were waxen strong, that they put the Canaanites to tribute; but did not utterly drive them out. Yet it came to pass, when the children of Israel were waxen strong, that they put the Canaanites to tribute; but did not utterly drive them out.
Joshua 17:13 belongs to the account of Israel receiving and dividing the Promised Land and settling it tribe by tribe, recording the conquering of the Canaanites and setting Israel on the way to conquer its enemies and enter the promised rest. Even when grown strong, Israel did not fully possess the land or drive out its inhabitants, but put the Canaanites to tribute instead of utterly driving them out as God had instructed, leaving them in the land. The Canaanites had already been dispossessed and had no right to remain, yet they wanted to stay, and Israel compromised by letting them stay.
That period was marked by lack of faith and slowness, by failures of trust and later backsliding, and by failure to carry out God's instructions. That unfaithfulness kept Israel from possessing the land as fully as it could have, bringing adversity instead of the prosperity it might have known, with consequent captivity until the Lord raised up judges as saviours to help them. Israel's settlement in Canaan therefore did not fulfill the promise that Abraham's seed would possess the gate of its enemies. This failure to remove the Canaanites completely foreshadowed Israel's later failure and captivity.