No Kings Part 3

Judges, Chaos, and the Seduction of Kingship

After Joshua, the story of Israel enters one of its most sobering chapters. The promises of the conquest give way—not to flourishing, but to fracture. With no central authority and a generation’s memory of faith and miracles fading, Israel plunges into a cycle of discord and decline. The Book of Judges, one of scripture’s most unflinching testaments to the perils of unfinished civic work, captures this paradox in a haunting refrain: “In those days, there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” (Judges 21:25)