The wheels come off. No king, no leadership, just a nation sliding downhill and God raising up one rough deliverer after another — left-handed Ehud with a hidden dagger, Deborah calling the shots, Gideon and his three hundred, Samson with his hair and his terrible judgement in women. It gets darker as it goes, and the last few chapters are genuinely grim. The refrain says it all: in those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit.