The book of Judges is in the "history" books of the Old Testament. In this early part of the history of the nation of Israel, the people were leaderless. The book tells over and over, "...and again the children of Israel did evil in the eyes of the Lord." The people would rebel against God, they would give themselves to pagan idols, the Philistines would take over and enslave them, they would then repent and turn back to God, who would then have to save them by rising up a "judge" to lead the people to fight off their Philistine captors...only to have the next generation of Hebrew children to repeat the whole thing all over again. After this went on for so long, the people eventually became cynical and abandoned biblical morality altogether (it didn't help that the high priest Eli and his two sons were defrauding the people). This resulted in the gang rape of this woman by a group of Benjamites. When the rest of the tribes heard what happened, they became so enraged that they nearly wiped out the entire tribe of Benjamin. Those that were left raped women from other tribes in order to keep their tribe alive. The nation was so horrified at what they had become that they cried out to God for salvation from their true enemy...themselves. And God answered by giving them the last true judge of Israel, the prophet Samuel, to show them the way.

This story shows us that no matter how much we've messed up our lives, God will still rescue us from our bad choices by rescuing us from our sins and sinfulness.