Hey I'm Matt welcome back to the 10 minute Bible Hour podcast. This week of the program is brought to you by

Dwell Audio Bible app. They've got all kinds of customizable playlists as well as the ability

to just power through gigantic chunks of Bible. Anything you want. I'm a big fan. Check it out down in the show

notes for more information.

All right, yesterday we talked about this weird convoluted story for how Herod the Great comes to

power and his dynasty ends up ruling over the client king state of Judea, well and really

Galilee on behalf of the occupying Romans. And it really is a goofy story

because we go from leaving off in the Old Testament with one set of

global powers running the show to something completely unrecognizable a few hundred years later.

But Herod, along with Rome, these are the two, I suppose sort of defining characters that

really epitomize the change that's gone on.

And yesterday I talked a lot about how reviled

Herod would have been amongst most of Matthew's audience.

Maybe I gave the impression that he would have been

reviled by everyone.

But in this episode I want to try to be fair to the things that maybe went okay in Herod's

reign and that maybe a small percentage of Matthew's audience might have liked about Herod.

And then I want to talk a little bit more about some of the crazy stuff because it's just

juicy and interesting and fun.

And it'll give you a better picture of why a whole bunch of people didn't like Herod.

And you can get a sense of how they would have felt when his name pops up in the narrative.

So off the top of my head I'm trying to do a list of the good things.

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