24 - Judges 20-21 - There Was No King in Israel

These final chapters of the book of Judges concludes the two accounts that demonstrate the evil that the children of Israel engaged in when they departed from the LORD. These two accounts are marked by the repeated statement that, in those days, there was no king in Israel. The last account, about the abuse and death of the concubine of a traveling Levite, led to a civil war between the tribe of Benjamin and the rest of Israel. This civil war is the subject of the last two chapters in the book. The account of the war takes us back to the beginning of the book of Judges which opened with a review of how the children of Israel made war against the Canaanites to drive them out of the Promised Land. What are the similarities between the opening of the book and its conclusion? What are the similarities between the war against the Canaanites and the war against Benjamin? How does this apply to both us and Israel today?