Herod

Herod is the dynastic name of the Idumean (Edomite) family that ruled Judea and the surrounding regions as client kings under Rome from 37 BC into the late first century AD. Descended from Antipater, an Idumean whose people had been forcibly brought into Judaism a century earlier, the Herods were Jews by religion yet outsiders by blood and wholly dependent on Roman favour — a divided identity that bred both lavish patronage of the temple and deep insecurity about their throne. Several members of the line appear at pivotal moments across the Gospels and Acts, almost always as worldly power set against the purposes of God.

Herod the Great (reigned 37–4 BC), appointed "king of the Jews" by the Roman Senate, was a builder of genius and a ruler of notorious cruelty. He rebuilt the Jerusalem temple on a magnificent scale and raised the fortress-palaces of Caesarea, Masada, and the Herodium, yet murdered his favourite wife and several of his own sons to secure his crown. It was this Herod who, troubled by the Magi's report of a newborn "king of the Jews," sought the child's life and ordered the slaughter of the infant boys of Bethlehem, from which the holy family fled into Egypt (Matthew 2:1–18). At his death his kingdom was divided among three sons.

Of those sons, Archelaus ruled Judea so harshly that Joseph, returning from Egypt, withdrew instead to Galilee (Matthew 2:22). Herod Antipas (4 BC–AD 39), tetrarch of Galilee and Perea, is the "Herod" of Jesus' ministry: having taken his brother's wife Herodias, he imprisoned and then beheaded John the Baptist for rebuking the marriage (Matthew 14:1–12; Mark 6:17–29). Jesus called him "that fox" (Luke 13:32), and during the Passion Pilate sent Jesus to be examined by him, where Antipas mocked him and arrayed him in splendid clothing (Luke 23:7–12). The third son, Philip the tetrarch, ruled the northern territories more quietly.

Two further Herods dominate the book of Acts. Herod Agrippa I, grandson of Herod the Great, executed the apostle James with the sword and imprisoned Peter, only to be struck down by an angel of the Lord and eaten by worms when he accepted the crowd's cry that he spoke "with the voice of a god" (Acts 12:1–23). His son Herod Agrippa II, before whom (with his sister Bernice) Paul made his great defence at Caesarea, replied to the apostle's appeal, "In a short time would you persuade me to be a Christian?" (Acts 26:28). Across three generations, then, the Herodian dynasty forms a recurring foil in the New Testament — earthly kingship grasping after power and glory, threatened by an infant in Bethlehem, beheading the Lord's forerunner, mocking the Lord himself, and persecuting his church — a standing contrast to the humble and everlasting kingdom of the true King of the Jews.