This whole book is a series of cycles where: Israel obeys God, becomes prosperous, gets careless, falls into sin and idol worship, gets conquered by another people who mistreat them, cry out to the Lord, He sends a Judge to save them and turn them back to the Lord's ways, and they obey God again. This cycle repeats itself over and over and over in this book. There was no king there yet because God wanted to be their King. But they couldn't "see" God sitting on His throne ruling; they could see the judge, though, so they obeyed God while each judge was alive. But as soon as they were gone, each man went back to his own thinking, doing what was right in his own eyes, instead of looking to God's rules for guidance (17:6, 21:25). They could also see the idols, which so strongly enticed them. So this downward spiral finally culminated in the ultimate degradation of the sin of Sodom, which resulted in a disastrous civil war.
This cycle has played out in many lives since the days of the Judges. That "downward spiral" has afflicted people in every area, in every country, in every family. God often uses the crisis of the bottommost coil of the spiral to draw that individual to Himself, as He did me and many others. But we need to take care that we don't become complacent in our faith, for that will only draw us downward, away from where we need to be in our fellowship with our Father and in our witness of what God has done for us through Jesus.
Even so, come, Lord Jesus!
