1. Judges 13:1 (ESV)
  2. Exposition

What was the evil Israel did?

Judges 13:1 (ESV)

1 And the people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, so the LORD gave them into the hand of the Philistines for forty years.

The text does not specify what evil Israel did. But this beginning of the Samson cycle is a continuation of Judges 10:6–8, which does double duty as an introduction to both the Jephthah and the Samson narratives. There the author spells out the evil, that Israel turned from the Lord to worship foreign, false gods. The reference in Judges 10:7 to the gods of the Philistines foreshadows the appearance of the Philistine god Dagon at the climax of the Samson narrative (Judges 16:23–24).1