Judges 21:25

In those days... This verse, already occurring in Judges 17:6; Judges 18:1; Judges 19:1, is here added once more by way of apology for the lawless crimes, terrible disasters, evaded vows, and unhallowed excesses of retribution, which it has been the painful duty of the sacred historian thus faithfully and impartially to narrate. Out of these depths the subsequent Judges, whose deeds have been recorded in the earlier Chapter s, partially raised their countrymen, until the dread lessons of calamity had been fully learnt, and the nation was ripe for the heroic splendour and more enlightened faithfulness of the earlier monarchy.