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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 501. John and Herod
Subjects in this Topic:
III
John and Herod
Literature
Carpenter, W. B., The Son of Man among the Sons of Men (1893), 235.
Clow, W. M., The Secret of the Lord (1910), 255.
Cumming, J. E., John: The Baptist, Forerunner, and Martyr.
Davidson, A. B., The Called of God (1902), 229.
Dawson, W. J., The Man Christ Jesus (1901), 29.
Edersheim, A., The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, i. (1887) 654.
Farrar, F. W., The Life of Lives (1900), 227.
Feather, J., The Last of the Prophets (1894).
Ferrier, J. T., The Master: His Life and Teachings (1913), 65.
Furse, C. W., The Beauty of Holiness (1903), 47.
Greenhough, J. G., in Men of the New Testament: Matthew to Timothy (1905), 71.
Higginson, E., Ecce Messias (1871), 247.
Holtzmann, O., The Life of Jesus (1904), 127.
Lange, J. P., The Life of the Lord Jesus Christ, iii. 98, 108; v. 322.
Mackay, D. S., The Religion of the Threshold (1908), 260.
Meyer, F. B., John the Baptist (1911).
Reynolds, H. R., John the Baptist (1874).
Robertson, A. T., John the Loyal (1912).
Robertson, F. W., Sermons, iii. (1876) 270.
Simpson, W. J. S., The Prophet of the Highest (1895).
Smith, D., The Days of His Flesh (1905), 221.
Stalker, J., The Two St. Johns (1895), 189.
Watson, J., The Life of the Master (1902), 77, 89.
Dictionary of the Bible, ii. (1899) 677 (LI. J. M. Bebb).
Dictionary of the Bible, (Single-volume, 1909), 474 (J. G. Tasker).
Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels, i. (1906) 861 (J. C. Lambert).
Encyclopœdia Biblica, ii. (1901), col. 2498 (T. K. Cheyne).
Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, i. (1893) 1736 (E. Hawkins).
1. When we last heard of John he was baptizing in Ænon, near to Salim. The scene has changed. The Baptist has become the prisoner of Herod Antipas. Herod has two palaces in Peræa, one at Julias, the other at Machærus. John was imprisoned at Machærus.
Machærus had been built by Alexander Jannæus, but destroyed by Gabinius in the wars of Pompey. It was not only restored but greatly enlarged by Herod the Great, who surrounded it with the best defences known at that time. In fact, Herod the Great built a town along the shoulder of the hill, and surrounded it by walls fortified by towers. From this town a farther height had to be climbed, on which the castle stood, surrounded by walls and flanked by towers one hundred and sixty cubits high. Within the inclosure of the castle Herod had built a magnificent palace. A large number of cisterns, storehouses, and arsenals, containing every weapon of attack or defence, had been provided to enable the garrison to stand a prolonged siege. Josephus describes even its natural position as unassailable.
2. What was the reason of John's imprisonment? According to the Synoptists, it was due to the spiteful hatred of Herodias because he had rebuked Herod for making her his wife in flagrant defiance of the law of Israel. Josephus, on the other hand, says that Herod put the prophet to death because he “feared lest the great influence John had over the people might put it in his power and inclination to raise a rebellion; for they seemed ready to do anything he should advise.” The two statements, however, are not irreconcilable; and certainly the evidence of Josephus, whose interests as an historian lay altogether in the political direction, is not such as to cast any suspicion on the trustworthiness of the more detailed and more intimate Gospel narrative. It may very well have been the case that, while John's death was really due to the implacable hate of Herodias, Herod felt that this was hardly an adequate ground, or one that he would care to allege, for the execution of the Baptist, and so made political reasons his excuse. Assuredly there was nothing of the political revolutionary about John; yet his extraordinary influence over the people and the wild hopes raised among certain classes by his preaching might make it easy for Herod to present a plausible justification of his base deed by representing John as a politically dangerous person.
3. We might wonder how it could happen that a man like Herod, who notoriously lived in a glass house, so far as character went, should be willing to call in so merciless a preacher of repentance as John the Baptist was-before whose words, flung like stones, full many a glass house had crashed to the ground, leaving its tenant unsheltered before the storm. But it must be remembered that most men, when they enter the precincts of the court, are accustomed to put velvet in their mouths; and, however vehement they may have been in denouncing the sins of the lower classes, they change their tone when face to face with sinners in high places. Herod, therefore, had every reason to presume that John would obey this unwritten law; and, whilst denouncing sin in general, would refrain from anything savouring of the direct and personal. But John said to Herod, “It is not lawful for thee to have her.”
“It is refreshing,” says Robertson of Brighton, “to look upon such a scene as this-the highest, the very highest moment, I think, in all John's history; higher than his ascetic life. For, after all, ascetic life such as he had led before, when he fed upon locusts and wild honey, is hard only in the first resolve. When you have once made up your mind to that, it becomes a habit to live alone. To lecture the poor about religion is not hard. To speak of unworldliness to men with whom we do not associate, and who do not see our daily inconsistencies, that is not hard. To speak contemptuously of the world when we have no power of commanding its admiration, that is not difficult. But when God has given a man accomplishments or powers which would enable him to shine in society, and he can still be firm, and steady, and uncompromisingly true; when he can be as undaunted before the rich as before the poor; when rank and fashion cannot subdue him into silence; when he hates moral evil as sternly in a great man as he would in a peasant, there is truth in that man. This was the test to which the Baptist submitted.” So John was cast into prison.
When staying at a country house, amongst men of great literary reputation, when the host, then but slightly known to him, made use of some Rabelaisian expression-unaware perhaps for the moment that he was entertaining a clergyman-Jowett said quite simply, “Mr. --, I do not think myself better than you, but I feel bound to disapprove of that remark.” This attitude was maintained consistently in later life, but with differences of method, in accordance with his increasing knowledge of men and things. At a Scotch shooting lodge, somewhere in the sixties, he insisted on going down to the smoking-room with the others at a late hour, and when the conversation of the younger men took a doubtful turn, the small voice that had been silent hitherto, was suddenly heard-“There is more dirt than wit in that story, I think.” Once again, in the eighties, when at Balliol after dinner some old companion ventured on dangerous ground, he quietly said, “Shall we continue this conversation with the ladies?” and rose to go.1 [Note: The Life and Letters of Benjamin Jowett, i. 84.]