The Closing Chapters of Judges

I just want to share a section of the People's Bible on Judges by John Lawrenz which helps put the wild closing chapters of Judges in context:

"The last chapters of Judges are important. They balance the opening chapters. In the first chapter, we saw the Lord's high expectations for his people. In the second chapter, the writer prepared us for the recurring cycles of apostasy, oppression, deliverance, and (sometimes) rest. The last chapters are also a summary of the times. We are asked to look at a typical family, a typical tribe, a typical event, and, finally, a typical episode involving the whole federation of tribes.

"A thread of coincidences involving Levites, men called to serve the Lord, ties the pictures together. The resulting series of short stories has a theme repeated four times in the five chapters: 'In those days Israel had no king' (17:6; 18:1; 19:1; 21:25). The first and last times the theme is expanded with the words 'everyone did as he saw fit.' Israel's apostasy had dethroned Israel's Lord as the monarch of the nation. The covenant, in which the Lord provided every good and perfect gift and in which the people were asked to respond in selfless, thankful love, was broken. The covenant had been cancelled, not by the Lord but by the selfish, loveless will of disobedient sinners."