Yesterday, I wrote a very long post about an odd story in the Bible (called “It’s In The Bible”). The story is strange, but its inclusion in the Scriptures is even stranger. The point of the post was that I don’t get to decide what makes sense, what should happen, or how things are supposed to be, and that it’s wildly arrogant to think that I do.

But there is another layer to this, one that I didn’t mention yesterday. As the Micah account begins, verse 17:6 says, “In that day Israel had no king; all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes.” This verse is repeated, the last verse of the book, 21:25. Maybe that’s important.

The chapters immediately following the one on Micah are equally disturbing, I could’ve written yesterday’s post about them just as well. And twice, in 18:1 and 19:1, we find an abbreviated, “In that day Israel had no king.” Maybe that’s important, too.

What do these verses mean?

First, it’s just a fact, in those days Israel didn’t have a king. The people were decentralized, each tribe governed themselves. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the next sentence (after a semi-colon) and these stories are clear clues as to what it meant then.

I say “then,” because “whatever seemed right in their own eyes” is kind of a cultural ideal today. My truth, your truth, follow your heart, do what feels good, and on and on. So, today, it is played as a positive direction. (Is it, really?) But then? These few stories in these few chapters are not at all what we’d consider awesome. The chapter following Micah’s is far more horrific, maybe one of the most shocking in the entire Bible. And the last is ugly and misogynistic.

But it’s the semi-colon that ties them. Even though “all the people did what was right in their own eyes” isn’t spelled out every time, the semi-colon of chapters 17 and 21 tells us it is still there, the continuation of an idea. They had no king, and this fact serves as a symbol of spiritual anarchy, chaotic and random, without vision or coherence.

These stories don’t make sense, and that’s probably the point. When we are left to our own devices, we choose what feels good, we choose pleasure, and we always choose comfort, always choose ourselves. There’s no right or wrong, up or down, so we’re always casting idols, selling out, and throwing our daughters to the mob to save ourselves (a reference to chapter 19.) Our lives begin to look like these chapters, messy, disturbing, and often horrific.

They sound objective, like journalism, but they most certainly are not. They’re charged and pointed lessons, teaching us what it is to be human. Of course, we haven’t learned, our news stories could carry the tagline, “In these days the people have no king, and do whatever seems right in their own eyes,” and we are drifting farther and farther away from our shared humanity. It’s a sad story, this history of us, but it’s one that can change the moment we open our eyes and get back to writing the Big Story that’s always been there, from the beginning.