“Everyone did what was right in his own eyes”
In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes. (Judges 21:25 BSB)
What it sounds like today
A neutral, almost admiring note about personal freedom.
The cultural key
To modern ears 'doing what is right in your own eyes' can sound like healthy independence, but in Judges it is the epitaph on a nightmare. The line is the book's refrain (also 17:6), and it closes chapters of escalating horror, idolatry, kidnapping, civil war, and the atrocity against the Levite's concubine. 'No king' means both the literal absence of a monarch and the deeper absence of anyone, God included, ruling the nation's conscience. 'Right in his own eyes' is precisely the opposite of doing what is right in the LORD's eyes; it names moral anarchy, and it sets up Israel's cry for a king in the books that follow.
Recovered meaning
The book ends by diagnosing the chaos: with no shared king and no submission to God, everyone became his own authority, and the result was atrocity. It is not a celebration of freedom but a verdict on a society come undone.