Judges 1:6

‘ But Adonibezek fled, and they pursued after him, and caught him, and cut off his thumbs and his great toes.'

Adonibezek fled but was captured, and then they cut off his thumbs and his great toes. This was to disable him to prevent him from causing further trouble, for he was a formidable foe. But it was also because he himself so treated chiefs he captured, which possibly included captured men of Judah. If so they were following the legal dictate, ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth'.

The men of Judah were clearly horrified at this treatment meted out by him to his prisoners. Entering Bezek they had found these once important men, including possibly a few of their own who had been captured, disabled and scrabbling around the floor. So horrified were they that they exacted particular revenge for them. We do not read of this treatment accorded to prisoners elsewhere.