Judges 13:1 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

The children of Israel did evil again That is, fell into idolatry, not, it seems, after the death of Abdon, the last judge, but in the days of the former judges. The Lord delivered them into the hand of the Philistines These were a very inconsiderable people. They had but five cities of any note. And yet, when God used them as a staff in his hand, they were very oppressive and vexatious. Forty years To be computed, not from Abdon's death, but before that time. This is the longest oppression which the Israelites ever sustained, but Sir John Marsham and others think it is not different from that mentioned Judges 10:7-8, but one and the same with it; the Philistines harassing the Israelites in the west, while the Ammonites oppressed them in the east; and that, though the tyrannical treatment of them by the Philistines lasted longer, yet it began at the very same time with the other, and rendered their distress the greater. Others suppose, that it did not begin till after Jephthah's death, and that the great slaughter of the Ephraimites made by him greatly encouraged the Philistines to rise against Israel, one of Israel's chief bulwarks being so much weakened.