As the book of Judges draws to a close, the emphasis on a lack of a king becomes more and more apparent and tragic.  The truth is that God wanted to be Israel's king – and the lack of a king really signified a lack of God.  A lack of of God led to all kinds of corruption then just as it does now.  I don't mean to get on a soapbox here, nor do I want to make any particularly strong cultural statements or share my opinions, but I do find it interesting that the further away from God that the United States moves, the more corrupt the country becomes.  Now that we're not allowed to display the Ten Commandments in places or practice prayer in our schools, we haven't become more moral.  In fact, students are cheating at higher rates than ever before.  Public disgraces of our national leaders are commonplace.  Even the presidency hasn't been devoid of moral problems.  The Bible is clear, and secular history confirms, that life without God leads to all kinds of evils.  In the case of the Israelites, the crowning moment was the violation of the poor concubine by the people of Gibeah.  But just like with Samson, this didn't happen over night.  It was a slow move away from the things of the Lord.  Our challenge, as a culture, is to learn from history and to seek to avoid making similar mistakes.