Judges 15:10
And the men of Judah said, Why are ye come up against us? And they answered, To bind Samson are we come up, to do to him as he hath done to us. And the men of Judah said, Why are ye come up against us? And they answered, To bind Samson are we come up, to do to him as he hath done to us.
Judges 15:10 belongs to the history of Samson told in Judges 14-16, which shows that physical strength is no substitute for self-control and obedience to God. His extraordinary strength depended not on his well-knit sinews but on his condition as a Nazarite, of which his unshorn hair was the symbol. Living at Zorah near the Philistines, he mingled with them on friendly terms, and association with idolaters corrupted him through intimacies formed in youth that darkened his whole life. Just as he was entering manhood to execute his divine mission as judge and deliverer of Israel, when above all he should have been true to God, he determined to marry the Philistine woman at Timnath because she pleased him, connecting himself with Israel's enemies without asking whether he could better glorify God or fulfill his life's purpose. He was free to choose right or wrong, but he gave his passions free rein and ended in shame, disaster, and death, in contrast to Joseph, who faced temptation and chose purity.
The immediate setting is that after Samson struck the Philistines with a great slaughter to avenge the barbarous murder of his wife, they pursued him with a strong force to the rock Etam in the tribe of Judah. The question from the men of Judah reveals their great alarm and fear, and their base willingness to surrender their own deliverer to his enemies rather than fight for him. Three thousand men of Judah went up to bind Samson and deliver him to the Philistines. Even at such odds they dared not approach him to seize him, because they were assured he would not harm his own countrymen. Samson consented to be bound with two new ropes and delivered to the Philistines, but only after first exacting from his countrymen a promise not to attack him themselves and thus compel him to destroy them.