"Israel had no king."

            Judges 17-21 is bracketed by this sentence:  “In those days, Israel had no king and everyone did as he saw fit.”  The notice that there was no king is repeated in 18:1 and 19:1.  This is important for two reasons:  one historical, the other theological.

            Historically, throughout the period of the judges, Israel didn’t really exist as a cohesive nation.  There were no central governing institutions.  Instead they seemed to have existed as a loose confederation of semi-integrated—and often antagonistic—tribes.  Let’s stipulate at the outset that this picture seems at odds with the idea of a unified people coming out of Egypt.  Some scholars will use that as a way to drive a wedge into the historicity of the story.  They’ll argue, “Look, the Exodus thing is clearly a propaganda piece, because the historical reality is different.”  We could counter two ways.  First, we can stipulate that Moses has a different story to tell than the writer of Judges.  The former wants to emphasize the Lord’s gracious call to Israel; the latter wants to emphasize how bad things were.  Second, it is possible that the settlement of the land undermined whatever sense of unity had been there following the Exodus.

            Theologically, Israel did have king.  They just forgot to worship Him and treat Him as a king.  (You will have picked up, I’m sure, that the king in question is Yahweh, the God of Israel.)  That Israel doesn’t own Yahweh as king is a major theme through her history.  In a week or so, we’ll read 1 Samuel, and there the people will ask for a king—“like the other nations.”  In Judges this contradiction is demonstrated in the way that Micah builds an image and an idol just before the lack of a king is mentioned (17:5-6).

            The disorder and irreligiosity of Israel is further highlighted by the violence that Dan does to an unsuspecting people and by the brutality of a Levite and of the other tribes against Benjamin.