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Mat_2:19-21
It is observable, that he was directed to return to “the land of Israel”—the most general description of the country possible—without any special designation of the part of that land to which he should direct his steps, although that eventually proved to be a matter of serious importance. This reminds us of the call of Abraham, who was summoned to quit his own country, for a land the Lord would show him, without that country being designated till some years after, when he was actually to proceed into it. Thus does the Lord love to encourage child-like trust in Him, by affording just so much information for our walk and way as may be needful for our present guidance; without encumbering us with so much information respecting final steps and ultimate results, as might only increase our anxieties, and wean us from that constant reference to Him in which our safety lies. In the same spirit we are taught to pray: “Give us this day our daily bread;” not, “Give us this year our yearly bread.”
Herod was dead. And how died he? The circumstances of his death are worth recording here, not only as showing the awfully fit ending of a bad career, but as still further setting forth the correspondence of the man’s character, with the inferences we naturally draw from the simple facts recorded in Scripture. It is indeed observable, here and elsewhere, how uniformly the sacred writers leave us to draw our own inferences respecting the characters of wicked men. They state the facts concerning them necessarily involved in their narratives, but they do not sit down to write characters of them, after the manner of common writers; and still less do they shower upon their heads epithets of condemnation and abhorrence. So here, when in regard to the massacre at Bethlehem—the event by which alone Herod is known to the Scripture reader—one of the worst of men the world ever saw is represented as committing one of the most awful of his many crimes, and yet there is not a single mark of exclamatory indignation; no reference to those other parts of his conduct into which commentators and historians now naturally enter; nor is anything stated that might lead to the knowledge, that his general conduct was not upright. There is, as Barnes remarks, “no wanton and malignant dragging him into the narrative, that they might gratify malice in making free with a very bad character. What was to their purpose, they record; and what was not, they left to others. This is the nature of religion. It does not speak evil of others, except where necessary, nor then does it take pleasure in it.”
When the evangelists wrote the evil of Herod’s life, the circumstances of that life had not, so far as we know, been published to the world, although matter of familiar knowledge to the people. But now that this has been done, the facts not referred to by them may be advantageously produced for the illustration or corroboration of the sacred historians. We shall, however, only call the attention of the reader to a few facts concerning his death—the life of Herod being too large a theme to be opened here.
When Herod was seized with his last illness, he was sixty-nine years old; and at that time his eldest son, Antipater, was in confinement, having been convicted of treasonable crimes, but not executed until permission should be received from the Emperor Augustus. Meanwhile Herod grew worse. His disease was of that excruciating and loathsome kind with which God, in his righteous judgments, has often afflicted and dishonored the endings of great and blasphemous tyrants. It was a fever, accompanied with violent internal heat. His intestines were ulcerated, the feet were swollen, and the tender parts were gangrened, and filled with worms. His breathing was oppressive, and horribly fetid, and he was subject to violent convulsions; yet, in the midst of all, he retained a most voracious appetite for food. The warm-baths of Callirrhoe, beyond the Jordan, were recommended by his physicians; but this remedy being ineffectual, an oil-bath was ordered, which threw him into a fainting fit, and nearly proved fatal. He then gave up all hope of recovery; and after having distributed presents among his soldiers and dependants, he returned from Callirrhoe to Jericho. The agonies of his disorder, the reproaches of his conscience, the disturbances in his family, and the peevishness of old age, increased the natural cruelty of his disposition. He know that the Jews could have no reason to lament his death; and he thought of a truly diabolical device to give them cause for grief. He sent orders throughout Judea, requiring the presence of all the chief men of the nation at Jericho, who, on their arrival, were consigned to imprisonment in the hippodrome. Then summoning his sister Salome, and her husband Alexis, to his bed-side, he told them: “My life is now short. I know the Jewish people; and nothing will please them better than my death. You have their chiefs now in your custody. As soon as the breath is out of my body, and before my death can be known, do you let in the soldiers upon them, and slay them. All Judea then, and every family, will, however unwillingly, bewail my death.” Josephus, to whom we owe this information, adds, “that with tears in his eyes be conjured them, by their love to him, and their fidelity to God, not to fail in securing this honor to his death!”
About the same time Herod received the desired letter from the emperor, authorizing him to proceed against his son Antipater. On hearing this his spirits revived; but he speedily relapsed, and attempted self-destruction. Although he was withheld from the execution of his purpose, the customary cry was raised throughout the palace, as if he were really dead. These lamentations reached the ears of Antipater, and he forthwith attempted to bribe his guard, by a large sum of money, to suffer him to escape from his prison. But he was so universally hated, that the guard made his offers known, and his father ordered his instant execution. Herod then made a new will, appointing his son Archelaus his successor in the kingdom of Judea; Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee and Perea; and Philip, tetrarch of Batanea, Gaulonitis, Trachonitis, and Paneas. This was the arrangement which Joseph found subsisting on his return to Judea—so different from that which had been understood when he departed; for under the previous will Herod, having been then rendered suspicious of his two elder sons, Archelaus and Philip, through the slanders of Antipater, had bequeathed the kingdom of Judea to his youngest son Antipas.
Herod yielded up his blood-stained life—in the thirty-seventh year of his reign, and the seventieth of his age—five days after the execution of Antipater. It was shortly before the Passover, which is a note of time for the season of the year in which the holy family returned to the land of Israel.
Salome was a sister worthy of Herod; and would probably have felt little compunction in executing the fatal orders he had left her. But she feared the vengeance of the people; and therefore she dismissed the noblemen confined in the hippodrome, as if by Herod’s orders, before his death was publicly announced.