"Israel had no king."

Judges 17-18:  http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=judges%2017-18&version=NIV

            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.  There are two responses to that fact.  First, we can note  that Moses has a different story to tell than the writer of Judges.  Moses wants to emphasize the Lord’s gracious call to Israel; Judges wants to emphasize how bad things were because of Israel's disobedience.  Second, it is possible that the settlement of the land undermined whatever sense of unity had been there following the Exodus; that is, as the Israelites settled their particular allotments, they lost contact and connection with their brothers in the other tribes.  So, Israel had no king: there was no unity in the nations.

            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,” which will be a major bone of contention.  (I think it's one of the most important verses for understanding the subsequent history of Israel, right into Jesus' day.)  In Judges 17018, this refusal to own the Lord as king is demonstrated in the way that Micah builds an image and an idol, by the injustice that Dan perpetrates on Micah, and by the violence that Dan does to an unsuspecting people.  False religion and self-seeking violence become two ways to demonstrate that Israel has rejected God's rule.