This verse is a challenge, with its casting of the judges in the roles of preachers/teachers of how their fathers walked in obedience to the Lord’s commandments. For there is no evidence of any of the judges functioning this way in the book. Block says, It seems the author is looking back at the period of the governors/judges through the filter of the last governor, Samuel, who clearly functioned in this capacity.
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17 Yet they did not listen to their judges, for they whored after other gods and bowed down to them. They soon turned aside from the way in which their fathers had walked, who had obeyed the commandments of the LORD, and they did not do so.