In those days Israel had no king. And in those days the tribe of the Danites was seeking a place of their own where they might settle, because they had not yet come into an inheritance among the tribes of Israel. – Judges 18:1

Today’s Scripture Reading (November 15, 2012): Judges 18

One of the biggest societal problems that we face is not poverty; it is the difference that exists between those who are rich in the community and those who have nothing. That difference means that something has broken and is no longer working. And the break is really on two sides. First, the biblical expectation is that we would take an active interest in the well being of other people. That is, that we will actually do something about the poor in our midst. Even just the acknowledgement that we are responsible for our own families is a start. There is a natural rhythm to life. In the beginning we are taken care of by our families, but the reality of life until very recently is that we would also be cared for by family at the end of life. Today, it seems easier to let the poor – even the poor that we are related to – to be taken care of by the government rather than by us. And often it is not that we do not have the resources to take care of the problem, but rather that we have not well used the resources we possess.

But there is a second problem. The problem is revealed by what some critics call the welfare state. The problem is this; we are seeing an increasing number of people willing to be taken care of. It is not a new problem. Even in New Testament times, there was a group of people that were willing to simply move from community to community and be cared for. And the result of both of these problems is an the ever widening gap between the haves of the community and the have not’s. Because there is a widening of the gap between the rich and the poor, the entire community begins to suffer from a lack of health; impacting almost every area of life - including physical health, life expectancy and violence.

The author of Judges repeats the phrase – In those days Israel had no king – and then proceeds to reveal the problem that no king brought with it. In this case, there was an inequity between the tribes that had received their inheritance and those who had not (or those who had received an inheritance but had been unwilling or unable to take and inhabit the land.) The result was an increase in violence as those who did not have moved against those that had. The resultant violence was a major indication of a lack of health of the nation.

But the reality of the phrase – In those days Israel had no king – was also a statement of the spiritual health of the nation. Israel had a king. They had been designed to be a theocracy – a nation built with God as their king. But the nation had lost sight of that fact – partially because they had been left without a strong leader (other than the episodic Judges) since the days of Joshua. In those days, it was not that Israel had no king, but rather that there was no one to remind them of their king, and the health of the community suffered because of that lack.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Judges 19