What does Judges 2:11 mean?

The second part of this re-introduction to the book of Judges takes a painful turn. Joshua's generation was faithful to the Lord, but the generation that followed was not. Verses 1–5 explain their first sin: They failed to drive out the Canaanites from the Promised Land. This is exactly what God had warned them would happen if they failed to purge the territory of this evil culture:

"But in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall devote them to complete destruction, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded, that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods, and so you sin against the Lord your God" (Deuteronomy 20:16–18).

Despite a clear command from God, Israel allowed the depraved Canaanites to stay. Those remnants almost immediately began to convert the people to follow a series of false gods, known as Baals, instead of Yahweh. The Hebrew word ba'al carries a broad range of meanings, but implies lordship, mastery, or ownership. In some ways, the term fits into Semitic language much as "God" or "god" does into English. In the Bible, this refers to idols in general, or to a specific fertility deity often worshipped in Canaan.