Yesterday in my Bible reading, I sat in the Book of Judges chapters 17–19. I’ve read it before, but this time it didn’t just pass by me. It settled in. I’m still thinking about it.
It’s the kind of passage you almost want to look away from.
Micah builds a household shrine, creating his own version of worship. The tribe of Dan comes and takes the idols, establishing false worship as their own. And then the story turns darker still. A Levite’s concubine is abused, discarded, and murdered in Gibeah. Her body is cut into twelve pieces and sent throughout Israel.
It’s hard to read. Hard to understand why God would include it. But maybe we’re not supposed to understand it as much as we’re supposed to feel the weight of it.
All of this happens under one haunting truth: “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” (Judges 21:25)
This warns us what it looks like when people walk in disobedience, not all at once, but step by step.
It begins with distorted worship, as we shape God into something we can manage.
It moves into compromised leadership, those who should know truth but no longer live it.
And it ends in the unthinkable, where people made in the image of God are treated as disposable.
It’s easy to read this and think, how could they fall so far? But I can’t help but ask the harder question, how could we not?
Because left to ourselves, we don’t drift toward truth. We drift toward what feels right. And what feels right isn’t always what is right.
These chapters aren’t just showing us their depravity. They are holding up a mirror to our own.
We were never meant to be our own authority. We were never meant to define truth for ourselves. And when we try, it doesn’t lead to freedom. It will always lead to ruin.
Maybe that’s the warning tucked into these chapters:
When everyone does what is right in their own eyes, what follows is not freedom… but loss of a moral society.
