King of the Mountain
King of the Mountain
Judges 21:25
In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.
I’ve lost count of how many times the biblical author repeats this phrase throughout the Book of Judges, but I find it fitting that he ends the sacred scroll with one more reiteration of the point. He must be mentally worn out by this time. I imagine he heaves a deep, heavy sigh as he puts down his scribal quill for the last time and rolls up the parchment. He can’t run to his car radio and turn on some positive, encouraging Christian music to salve his spirit, or listen to a series of sermons on the Psalms. No, for him, if I’m imagining it correctly, this final exclamation point to a commonwealth gone horribly wrong, to a generation where Levites sell themselves for ten shekels and a shirt, to a Promised Land where men violate women in the city streets is the last gasp of a worn-out psyche trying to hold it together. We know the Spirit of the LORD is behind these words. We know Almighty God miraculously and mystically inspired this man to write what he did. But don’t miss the human element in the work, friend. Don’t overlook how grueling these chapters in biblical history must’ve been for the saint tasked with recounting them. If this guy is anything like me, he’s making a b-line to the woods right now to sit quietly by a stream, or hitting the back roads for a long, anguished drive, or climbing the highest mountain he can find to clear his head.
Friend, the very next pages of divine Scripture will radiate with light and poetry and romance and redemption, depicting a faith and virtue so pure and profound that it will wash away any lingering uneasiness from Judges. The very next scroll of God’s self-revelation will rapture our hearts with famines coming to an end, and bitter hearts being revived in their twilight years, and a love story that blossoms into a Messianic line of kings. Oh, but that’s not for today. Today is the time to close the book on Judges and soberly reflect on the mess we make of our lives when we choose to sit on a throne that only Christ is big enough and good enough and wise enough to inhabit.