HERODIAS
MATT. 14:3, 6 MARK 6:17, 19, 22 LUKE 3:19 |
As the second wife of Herod Antipas, she demands through her daughter the head of John the Baptist, because he had denounced her marriage. She receives this ghastly gift on a platter. |
SHE OCCASIONED THE BEHEADING OF JOHN THE BAPTIST
THE most striking example in the New Testament of how far reaching can be the evil influence of a heartless, determined woman in a high position is the story of Herodias. Not only did she occasion the beheading of John the Baptist, but it may even be that she helped to hasten the crucifixion of Christ. It was to her husband, Herod Antipas, that Jesus was sent by Pilate, and Herod might have delayed the verdict. This was the same Herod whom Jesus earlier had compared to a “fox” because of his cunning (Luke 13:32).
Herodias herself, like her husband, was descended from a line of wicked people. Though the story in the Bible relates only one scene in her life, the beheading of John the Baptist, let us view her entire life from the pages of history in order better to understand what kind of woman she was.
Her first marriage had been to her half-uncle Herod Philip. She entered into a second incestuous and illicit union when she divorced him to marry his half-brother Herod Antipas, who was the stepbrother of her father Aristobulus. This Herod Antipas was tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea during Jesus’ time and he is mentioned more frequently in the New Testament than any other Herod.
To Herodias’ first union had been born her dancing daughter, to whom Josephus gives the name of Salome, though in the New Testament she is never identified in any way except as Herodias’ daughter. The daughter was born of the Herod family on both her father’s and mother’s side and must have been brought up in the evil atmosphere of the family. We are told she excelled in sensuous dancing.
History shows us that evil ran all through Herodias’ life. She was a granddaughter of Herod the Great, who carved out his empire with a sword and sought to destroy the child Jesus (Matt. 2:13). The family line of Herod has become so entangled as to make it a veritable puzzle to historians. They record that he had ten wives and killed his first wife Mariamne, the only human being he ever seems to have loved. Herodias’ father, Aristobulus, was the son of Herod the Great by this Mariamne.
After Herodias’ first marriage to Herod Philip, history records, she lived in Rome, where her husband had been exiled and disinherited because his mother had taken part in a plot against his father, Herod the Great. There Herodias and her husband, Herod Philip, entertained as their guest her husband’s half-brother, Herod Antipas. He had come to Rome to receive his investiture as tetrarch and at this time was married to the daughter of King Aretas of Arabia.
Herod Antipas, while a guest in his half-brother’s home, indulged in a guilty relationship with the brother’s wife, Herodias. Desiring to be closer to the throne than she could ever be with her present husband, a more retiring man, Herodias was willing to pay any price for a regal position, regardless of principles or people involved.
She persuaded Herod Antipas to divorce his wife, and she in turn divorced her husband and left Rome for Tiberias, the capital city of the province of Galilee, where Herod Antipas was now tetrarch. With her went her daughter, who probably was just entering her teens.
Great artists have depicted Herodias as a beautiful woman, who wore a crown from which a thin veil fell in long, graceful folds. Beneath it was her dark hair, adorned with pearls. Her dress was of a flowing, rich, regal fabric. Richard Strauss has made more real her wickedness in his opera Salome, with its setting in Galilee, where her second husband, Herod Antipas, had great power.
The only one who had the courage to speak against this incestuous union of a man of such power was John the Baptist, who said to Herod, “It is not lawful for thee to have her” (Matt. 14:4). She was his brother’s wife. Herod would have put John to death at once, but he feared the multitude (Matt.14:5), which looked upon John the Baptist as a prophet. In Mark 6:19 we learn that it was Herodias who felt especially bitter about John and desired his death but was held back by Herod.
Herodias, however, was not a woman who could easily forget John the Baptist’s stinging rebuke of her marriage. Vindictive as well as cruel, she determined that she would get rid of this man; and so she entered upon her foul scheme.
Her daughter danced for Herod in the palace on his birthday, as Herodias sat looking on. The daughter pleased Herod so much that he said to her, “Ask of me whatsoever thou wilt, and I will give it thee” (Mark 6:22). The Scriptures tell us further that the daughter went forth and said to her mother, “What shall I ask?” And the mother made her ghastly request for “the head of John the Baptist.”
The daughter became her mother’s puppet as she danced to please Herod. Though he “was exceeding sorry” (Mark 6:26), Herodias had her way. She was the evil influence for both her daughter and her husband and the sole instigator of one of the most horrible crimes ever committed against a just and holy man.
According to the portrayal given us in Strauss’s opera Salome, the daughter danced with many veils and then flung them off one by one, as Herod looked on with lustful eyes. Then when she had concluded her dance, he sent and had John the Baptist beheaded and ordered that the head be brought on a platter and presented to Salome, who in turn gave it to her mother.
Though her husband and daughter committed this horrible crime against John the Baptist, they were merely the tools of Herodias. She was actually more responsible than either of them for the outrage because she had planned it. As Jezebel had made a tool of Ahab to slay the prophets of Jehovah, so Herodias had made a tool of Herod Antipas to behead John the Baptist. Though the Bible follows through to the very end of Jezebel’s life, when she was eaten by dogs, the Bible story of Herodias ends with the delivering to her of the head of John the Baptist.
However, ancient history relates that after this she became so jealous of the power of her brother, Agrippa, who had been made a king, that she induced her husband to demand of the Roman emperor Caligula the title of king for himself. But Agrippa sent word to Caligula that Herod had been plotting with the emperor’s enemies. When Caligula questioned Herod and Herodias in Rome, he was not satisfied with the answers of the guilty pair.
Instead of making Herod Antipas king, Caligula took from him even the title of tetrarch and added the tetrarchy of Galilee to the kingdom of Agrippa. The emperor banished Herod to Gaul. This is all related by Josephus.
Because of his friendship for her brother, Caligula offered Herodias her freedom, but she chose exile and disgrace with her husband. Strangely enough, this is the only time that we have any historical record of a praiseworthy action on her part.
Legend has it that Herodias and Herod died in Spain. Did she have time to live with her guilty conscience and to realize that the beheading of the holy and just John the Baptist was a crime for which she must suffer to the end of her days? Did she come to see that one word which she might have spoken could have saved Christ? At the time of Jesus’ trial Pilate, fearing to render an unpopular verdict, had sent Jesus to Herod, for Jesus was from the town of Nazareth in Herod’s tetrarchy of Galilee. But Herod had “mocked” and sent Jesus back to Pilate (Luke 23:11).
Did Herodias ever realize that, had she stood on the side of God and righteousness, the history of this period might have had a different ending? She had been warned by John the Baptist of her evil choice in the matter of her marriage, but she had hardened her heart to this message of God. With but one exception, her life had followed an evil pattern to the end.
SYRO-PHOENICIAN WOMAN
(Also Called The Canaanite Woman)
MATT. 15:21-28 MARK 7:24-30 |
Lives on border of Holy Land and is not of Jewish faith, but when Jesus comes into her country, she entreats Him to heal her afflicted daughter. In His test of her faith she shows patience, and He heals the daughter without even seeing her. |
“O WOMAN, GREAT IS THY FAITH”
SHE was a mother who had suffered unbearable tribulation because of the affliction of her daughter, who was “grievously vexed with a devil” (Matt. 15:22). Matthew calls her “a woman of Canaan,” meaning of course the ancient land of Canaan, signifying she was of Semitic stock but was not Jewish. Mark accurately calls her a Syro-Phoenician after her country of Phoenicia, which belonged to Syria and was on the northern frontier of Palestine, about three days’ journey by foot from Jerusalem.
By culture and language this woman was Greek, by religion a pagan, by position in her community a nobody. Yet with Christ these differences meant nothing. Wearied in every nerve and fiber of her being by the constant care her daughter needed, she made an importunate demand upon Him on His arrival in Syro-Phoenicia from Galilee. She had watched her child’s paroxysms so long and was so grieved by them that she probably could scarcely hold back a woman’s tears as she came toward Him. But she did hold back her tears.
She walked toward Him with new courage and faith. Her faith was based on wondrous stories she had heard of how He had healed the deaf, the dumb, and the blind, and those with evil spirits of many kinds. These stories had been brought to her ears by her own people from Tyre and Sidon. They, with the multitudes from Judaea and Jerusalem, had a short time before heard Jesus when He preached the Sermon on the Mount.
No doubt she had heard, too, His story of the widow of Zarephath, who had fed the prophet Elijah, of another race and country, out of her scanty store. Though this Syro-Phoenician woman knew that she was not of Jesus’ own people, she had the courage to believe that the family of God included Jew and Gentile alike, that Phoenicia, like Palestine, needed His missionary service.
And so the Syro-Phoenician woman came before Him crying, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil” (Matt. 15:22). How unutterably earnest that prayer! This mother was not complaining about her own burden but was lamenting the spiritual and physical distress of her daughter.
Nowhere in the Gospels do we find Jesus turning away from need as He did from this woman’s. He did not even answer her entreaty. His disciples, evidently disturbed that she should interrupt Him, said, “Send her away” (Matt. 15:23). Finally Jesus said to her, “I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt. 15:24).
Various attempts have been made to explain Jesus’ seeming aloofness toward the woman. In no other single sentence does He express such apparent coldness. Did He desire to test the feelings of His disciples, who in their narrow Judaic exclusiveness might be unprepared for Him to bestow His blessing upon this woman of another race? Or did He also desire to test further the woman’s faith? Or did He wish to teach that we must persevere, even when it might seem that His ear is turned away?
The Syro-Phoenician woman did persevere. She came and knelt before Him, saying, “Lord, help me” (Matt. 15:25). The very terseness of this entreaty expresses all the more strongly its urgency.
Jesus’ answer was a further test of her faith; He said, “It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs” (Matt. 15:26). The reference to dogs sounds offensive but was not meant to be. It is only an evidence of the picturesque speech of the peoples of this time, who understood that a metaphor should not be taken literally.
At any rate the woman understood. She was not offended. She took up the figure with wit and spirit and presence of mind, answering Jesus, “Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table” (Matt. 15:27). She let Jesus know that she was aware of the infinite plenty being lavished upon the people of Israel, and that all she asked for was a crumb which might fall to the floor for a poor, unworthy creature like herself. She also had made Him know that a child is a child, and, when afflicted like her own, helpless, no matter what its race.
Her obstinate faith had brought its reward. Jesus, always loving and merciful, turned to her saying, “O woman, great is thy faith” (Matt. 15:28). And from that hour her daughter was made whole again.
The healing of this Syro-Phoenician woman’s demoniac daughter was a demonstration of the instantaneous power of God. No waiting had been necessary. It also was a demonstration of how the presence of Jesus could be felt at a distance. He did not go in person to the girl, but healed her without ever seeing her.
The woman had learned that prayer is simply asking and receiving. “Your father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him” (Matt. 6:8). She who had been content to ask only a crumb had received from Christ the key to God’s vast storehouse.
No doubt she went forth and spread her faith among others and paved the way for the Christian community at Tyre. Thirty years later Paul tarried there a week, and his companion wrote: “And when we had accomplished those days, we departed and went our way; and they all brought us on our way, with wives and children, till we were out of the city: and we kneeled down on the shore, and prayed” (Acts. 21:5).