Self-Ruling People - Judges 17-21

 Judges 21:25 (ESV)

25 In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

Self-Ruling People

The above verse is the last verse in the book of Judges.  To fully appreciate the verse you have to have a good understanding of what took place before the author wrote this last line.   In chapters 17-21 we have a series of disobedient acts that are a domino affect on each other.  It begins in chapter 17 with a young man who steals money from his mom.  He admits that he took the money, thus avoiding the curse his mother pronounced on the thief.   But, she then gives him the money.  He then turns the money into an idol. He avoids his mother’s curse only to be cursed by God for making an idol.  That sums up the stories found in this section.  The young man did “what a was right in his own eyes.”  Making an idol out of the silver he returned to his mom seemed right to him, even though it violated God’s law.  

The next example of everyone doing their own thing, occurs when the tribe of Dan show up at the man’s house.  They take the idol and the man’s live-in-Levitical-priest and make the priest and idol the official priest and idol of Dan.   They did what was right in their own eyes, but against God’s Laws. 

A very gross example of this truth follows these two events.   A man has his concubine raped and murdered by a city of men from the tribe of Benjamin.   The men saw the concubine and “did what was right in their own eyes.”   They raped her and left her for dead.   The man who “owned” the concubine was so upset he cut the concubine up into twelve pieces and sent one piece each to the twelve tribes of Israel.  The man did “what was right in his own eyes.”   

From here there are another complete series of events where thousands of men and women and children from Israel were killed.  Israel was doing “what was right in their own eyes.”  There are some terrible events in these chapters.  Human behavior toward other men and women is not only gross treatment but horrible sin against God.  The spirit of man that believes he can do whatever is right in his own eyes is contrary to the Laws of God.  It will produce societal ills that only God’s Laws can reconcile.