Agrippa I

Agrippa I (also known as Herod Agrippa I) was the grandson of Herod the Great, the son of Aristobulus and Bernice, and the last ruler to govern a territory comparable in extent to that of his grandfather. Raised in Rome and educated alongside members of the imperial family, he cultivated friendships with Caligula and Claudius that proved politically decisive. Through a series of grants he eventually accumulated rule over virtually all of Palestine, the first such unified governance since Herod the Great.

In Acts 12, Agrippa is the king who executed James the brother of John and imprisoned Peter, seeking popular favor with the Jerusalem Jewish leadership. His sudden death — smitten of an angel and eaten by worms because he accepted divine honors at Caesarea (Acts 12:20–23) — is confirmed in a parallel account by Josephus, who records his death at the games in Caesarea in A.D. 44. The juxtaposition of Peter's miraculous escape and Agrippa's death frames the passage as a demonstration of divine judgment on the persecutor and divine protection of the persecuted church.