The people ratified the suzerain-vassal treaty with stones as witnesses. They heard the Great King’s historical prologue of everything he had done from Abraham to the conquest. They declared their commitment three times.

Then they forgot.

The Hebrew word is shakach: the covenant abandonment that Deuteronomy 8 identified as prosperity’s signature consequence. One generation of faithfulness, then forgetting.

They did not teach their children.

The generation that chose at Shechem in Joshua 24 died. Their children did not know the LORD, nor the works which he had done for Israel (Judges 2:10).

Judges shows what happens when a people keep breaking covenants. The pattern is well established and this is predicted in suzerain-vassal treaties. The faithless servants will suffer the consequences. They will then cry out. The Great King will deliver them. But then they will forget and the cycle will repeat. They will fail to express stable faithfulness.

The Book of Mormon’s pride cycle, prosperity, pride, wickedness, suffering, humility, covenant renewal, prosperity again, is Judges compressed into a formula.

Nephite narrators had the book of Judges on the brass plates and understood it perfectly. They were watching the covenant breaches happen live.