6 And then the People of Israel went back to doing evil in God's sight. They worshiped the Baal gods and Ashtoreth goddesses: gods of Aram, Sidon, and Moab; gods of the Ammonites and the Philistines. They just walked off and left God, quit worshiping him. 7 And God exploded in hot anger at Israel and sold them off to the Philistines and Ammonites, who, 8 beginning that year, bullied and battered the People of Israel mercilessly. For eighteen years they had them under their thumb, all the People of Israel who lived east of the Jordan in the Amorite country of Gilead. 9 Then the Ammonites crossed the Jordan to go to war also against Judah, Benjamin, and Ephraim. Israel was in a bad way!
10 The People of Israel cried out to God for help: "We've sinned against you! We left our God and worshiped the Baal gods!" 11 God answered the People of Israel: "When the Egyptians, Amorites, Ammonites, Philistines, Sidonians 12 - even Amalek and Midian! - oppressed you and you cried out to me for help, I saved you from them. 13 And now you've gone off and betrayed me, worshiping other gods. I'm not saving you anymore. 14 Go ahead! Cry out for help to the gods you've chosen - let them get you out of the mess you're in!"
Matthew Henry's Commentary on Judges 10:6-14
Commentary on Judges 10:6-9
(Read Judges 10:6-9)
Now the threatening was fulfilled, that the Israelites should have no power to stand before their enemies, Leviticus 26:17,37. By their evil ways and their evil doings they procured this to themselves.
Commentary on Judges 10:10-18
(Read Judges 10:10-18)
God is able to multiply men's punishments according to the numbers of their sins and idols. But there is hope when sinners cry to the Lord for help, and lament their ungodliness as well as their more open transgressions. It is necessary, in true repentance, that there be a full conviction that those things cannot help us which we have set in competition with God. They acknowledged what they deserved, yet prayed to God not to deal with them according to their deserts. We must submit to God's justice, with a hope in his mercy. True repentance is not only for sin, but from sin. As the disobedience and misery of a child are a grief to a tender father, so the provocations of God's people are a grief to him. From him mercy never can be sought in vain. Let then the trembling sinner, and the almost despairing backslider, cease from debating about God's secret purposes, or from expecting to find hope from former experiences. Let them cast themselves on the mercy of God our Saviour, humble themselves under his hand, seek deliverance from the powers of darkness, separate themselves from sin, and from occasions of it, use the means of grace diligently, and wait the Lord's time, and so they shall certainly rejoice in his mercy.