Judges 21: Every Man for Himself

In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit.-Judges 21:25 NIV.

Judges ends with perhaps the most telling verse in the Old Testament.  Everyone did as they saw fit, and the description in the preceding chapters details just how lawless the people had become under the judges.  When the men of Gibeah saw that a stranger had stopped in their town to spend the night, they besieged the house where he had taken refuge, demanding that he come out to have sex with them.  When that advance was refused, they took his concubines instead, raped her all night long and left her for dead on the doorstop where he had taken shelter.

It's not difficult to see a correlation between those events and the lawlessness to which any and all great civilizations and societies have succumbed.  It is our natural desire to have to have a king.  We have to have a ruler over us or we succumb the 'every man for himself' mindset that allows us to drift towards the depths of depravity.   As Bob Dylan says, "you've got to serve somebody."

Some of us recognize that we are part of a kingdom already, that we have a king who has established the only order that works.  When men cry out that society has gotten so depraved that the second coming is imminent, we only need look to history to see that isn't so.  Mankind left to it's own devices will always sink to the lowest depths.  Throughout history the only thing that has changed those circumstances is God's intervention.  Only God can pull us back from the brink.  How he chooses to do that is his alone to know.