Introduction
The book of Judges is the story of how the nation of Israel burst through the guard rails of God’s Law and went careening down into the valley of curses. Notice how, with each judge, there is a momentary upward cycle of repentance, but the inertia of this downward spiral quickly pulls the nation deeper into a self-destructive pattern. Each upward cycle is actually lower than the low point of the previous generation. Things got so bad that the goodness of the last judge Samson was actually wretched. Then, finally, there were no longer any judges and the nation began cannibalizing itself. Just like Moses had predicted.