Judges 15:11
Then three thousand men of Judah went to the top of the rock Etam, and said to Samson, Knowest thou not that the Philistines are rulers over us? what is this that thou hast done unto us? And he said unto them, As they did unto me, so have I done unto them.
The verse takes place at the top of the rock Etam in the tribe of Judah, where Samson had withdrawn for safe retreat after striking the Philistines with a great slaughter while a strong Philistine force pursued him there. The three thousand men of Judah came to him in great alarm and basely agreed to deliver him to his enemies. Yet even with those numbers they dared approach him only because they felt assured he would not harm his own countrymen. Samson consented to be bound and delivered to the Philistines, but first exacted from the men of Judah a promise not to attack him themselves and thus compel him to destroy them.
The episode belongs to a life darkened from the time Samson determined to marry the Philistine woman of Timnath who pleased him well, through friendly mingling and corrupting intimacies with idolaters and enemies of Israel, at the very time he as Nazarite judge and deliverer should above all have been true to God and carried out his divine mission. His extraordinary strength depended not on sinews but on his Nazarite condition symbolized by unshorn hair. His history shows that physical strength did not protect him from moral weakness, for he gave free rein to passion instead of relying on God, and the path he chose led to shame, disaster, and death.