Hello and welcome to the 10 minute Bible Hour podcast. I'm Jeff filling in for

Matt who is on vacation so we took an old message of his, cut it up into five sections, and today is part two.

Matt will be back next Monday to start Nehemiah.

This Herod guy comes up a lot. As he comes up in sermons and

Bible studies and things like that, we make a couple of references to him all the

time and yet I feel like in order to think of this in its larger context and

not go straight to Christmas sentimentality we have to know a little bit more

about Herod to get his motivations and to understand how this original Jewish audience would

have responded as soon as Herod comes on the scene.

Herod was an Edomite or an Idumian, which means that he was from southeastish of Israel and Judea.

The problem right up the bat with that is that he can't possibly

be the one who fulfills the Davidic promise, right? He's not from David. He's not even a Jew.

He's a guy who was forced to convert along with his family. So he's not legitimate. He's not real. He can't be the guy

Israel kind of knows this about him already, but it raises the question how does a guy like

that end up on the throne of a place that had had a kingdom for a long time?

Well as we've talked about you've got this thing called the Hasmonian dynasty you've heard of

the Maccabees it's what Hanukkah celebrates and

the Hasmonian dynasty was an independent Jewish kingdom that lasted for just a

little bit of time before Jesus. So once again, way back in the day you got Abraham, then you got Moses,

then around 1,000 years before Jesus you've got a kingdom with Saul and David and

Solomon, then they have a civil war, and then for about 250 years, 200 years, you have a

northern kingdom of Israel and a southern kingdom of Judah, but Israel gets conquered by the

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