Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life.

In the time it takes to get to work.

I'm Patrick Miller.

In Shakespeare's classic play, Romeo and Juliet, there's a character named Friar Lawrence,

and he speaks a few lines that foreshadow both Romeo and Juliet's

future death. This is what he says. These violent delights have violent ends, and in their triumph

die, like fire and powder. The warning that he's giving is about the intensity of young love,

igniting like gunpowder. First there's a flash,

and then everything is consumed. But it could equally apply to the world of conquest and empire.

We know by now that Ahab, his wife Jezebel, his entire family, and his royal entourage are all delighted

by violence. They murder to take what they want. They kill to silence whom

they will. Their violent delights seem to affect their desired outcomes. Jezebel's violence makes the

prophets of Yahweh flee. Ahab and Jezebel's murder of Nabath secures land for their desires. But these violent delights have violent ends.

The grand and glorious flash of Ahab's reign flames bright. Then it's entirely consumed by the

violence of another ruler. Now this is a clear pattern in the Bible that rulers and empires

characterized by violence do not march forth unseen by God.

He always sends men and women who were like them to enact violence upon them, the very

same violence that they enacted upon others. It's a cycle, violence leading to violence,

leading to violence. We encounter one such story in 2 Second Kings 9 and 10. Ahab is already dead,

but now his violent wife and sons reap what they've sowed. So let me just give a public service

announcement because this passage is hard to hear. It's gruesome, it's dark, and it's awful. But with

that said, let's pick up in verse 30.

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