Judges 18:1
In those days there was no king in Israel: and in those days the tribe of the Danites sought them an inheritance to dwell in; for unto that day all their inheritance had not fallen unto them among the tribes of Israel. In those days there was no king in Israel: and in those days the tribe of the Danites sought them an inheritance to dwell in; for unto that day all their inheritance had not fallen unto them among the tribes of Israel.
In those days Israel had no king, and the tribe of the Danites was seeking an inheritance to dwell in because its allotted inheritance had not yet fallen to it or been fully allotted and possessed among the tribes. That search took place while Israel was dividing the land, when the Lord's tabernacle, enclosed with curtains and called His house, stood at Shiloh. To secure a tribal home amid those unsettled conditions, the Danites sent men to find land where they could settle, beginning the move north that led them to take Laish.
The closing section of the book to which the verse belongs records the building of a sanctuary at Dan. Chapters 17 through 21 record events that occurred in the early part of the history of the judges rather than at the end of the period, with the main narrative of the book ending at chapter 16. Compared with statements such as Judges 17:1 and 18:31, the reference to there being no king helps place the writing of the book around the time Israel had a king, at least as late as the time of Samuel and possibly during Saul's reign.
The verse reflects the disorder of a period without a restraining royal authority, when people acted without effective order. The closing chapters are a record of Israel's backsliding that shows grave moral disorder, when people did what seemed right to themselves and Israel had fallen very low before Samuel the prophet was called, followed by disgrace and punishment that offers no excuse for sin. The deeper problem was not the system of government, for the judges were part of God's intended government with God Himself as the supreme King, but the people's lack of self-government and failure to value that arrangement.
Having no human king did not mean Israel was without a king, for the Lord was with them and the shout of a king was among them, and God's presence and leadership made Israel His chosen people even without a human monarch. The events in Judges 18 are evidence of an early apostasy by the tribe of Dan, which is suggested as a reason Dan was later omitted from the tribes numbered in the sealing of Revelation 7.