And yet they would not hearken unto their judges, but they went a whoring after other gods, and bowed themselves unto them: they turned quickly out of the way which their fathers walked in, obeying the commandments of the Lord; but they did not so. (Judges 2:17)
Their defeats at the hands of enemies and the consequent oppression did not avail to teach the Hebrew people obedience. In God’s efforts to save them He had allowed disaster to strike them. When He caused a lessening of their misery by the work of the judges, He found the people as impenitent as ever.
Went a whoring.
This is a frequent metaphor in the Bible for religious apostasy. Inasmuch as the worship of heathen deities in the Near East was often accompanied by sexual immorality in their temples and groves, the term was not only metaphorically but literally exact.