The Israelites' return to apostasy brought discipline from two different directions at the same time. In the east the Ammonites oppressed Israel while in the west God raised up the Philistines.
"The acuter pressure at this stage came from the Ammonites who were crueller in nature and more predatory in their methods than the Philistines (cf. 1 Sa. 11:1, 2)."211
These verses really introduce the judgeships of Jephthah, Ibzan, Elon, Abdon, and Samson (10:8-16:31). Another possibility is that since the introductory formula in these verses is not strictly a sequence indicator, the judgeship of Jephthah may have overlapped Gideon's somewhat.
". . . it is possible that Ammon took advantage of the terror brought on by the Midianite raids of Gideon's day to do some raiding of their own."212
The Baals and the Ashtaroth (Asherim, v. 6) were the Canaanite deities. The Lord did not give us the names of the gods of Syria (Aram) that lay to the northeast of Israel in the Old Testament. In Sidon, a town in Phoenicia to Israel's northwest, Ashtoreth, the consort of Baal, was a chief deity (1 Kings 11:5). In Moab to the east and south Chemosh was the main god (1 Kings 11:33), and Molock was another important deity (Num. 21:29). The Ammonites also worshipped Molock (Lev. 18:21) and sometimes called him Milcom (1 Kings 11:5, 33). Dagon was the main idol in Philistia (16:23). These "watchdog"gods were believed to guard and favor their own particular territories.213Verses 6 and 7 give us the last and longest list of Israel's sins.
The only contiguous neighbor of Israel's that did not have a negative influence on the chosen people during the period of the judges as far as the text reveals was Edom. However, since about 300 years of history expired in the judges period, it is likely that the Edomites also opposed the Israelites.
"The spiritual trends observed in Israel at this time did not merely reflect syncretism, but in many cases involved the total abandonment of the worship of Jehovah in favor of other national deities."214
"The description of Yahweh's response to Israel's spiritual defection confirms our suggestion that in the narrator's mind the nation's Canaanization is coming to a climax. First, for the first time since 3:8 the text mentions God's anger as the emotion behind his selling the Israelites into the hands of the enemies. Second, for the first time the narrator notes that Yahweh had handed his people into the power of two different nations--the Philistines and the sons of Ammon."215
Notice how much more diversified Israel's idolatry had become. The Israelites were now worshipping foreign gods as well as the gods of Canaan. Furthermore they abandoned the worship of Yahweh.
The text reveals that the Philistines and the Ammonites began to oppress Israel simultaneously from the west and the east respectively. The writer proceeded to narrate the Ammonite account first (10:8b-12:7) and then the Philistine (13:1-16:31).
