Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadBob Utley You Can Understand the Bible - Acts 12:20 - 12:23
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Act_12:20-23
20Now he was very angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon; and with one accord they came to him, and having won over Blastus the king's chamberlain, they were asking for peace, because their country was fed by the king's country. 21On an appointed day Herod, having put on his royal apparel, took his seat on the rostrum and began delivering an address to them. 22The people kept crying out, "The voice of a god and not of a man!" 23And immediately an angel of the Lord struck him because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and died.
Act_12:20 "Now he was very angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon" Herod was very angry and continued to be so (periphrastic imperfect). The particular historic incident and person are not known in history, but the region of Tyre and Sidon depended on the agricultural produce from the area of Galilee (cf. 1Ki_5:11; Ezr_3:7; and possibly Eze_27:17).
Act_12:21 "On an appointed day Herod, having put on his royal apparel" This occurred in a.d. 44. For a more complete account of this event see Josephus' Antiq. 19.8.2 (translated by William Whiston, Kregal).
"At which festival, a great multitude was gotten together of the principal persons, and such as were of dignity through his province. On the second day of which shows he put on a garment made wholly of silver, and of a contexture truly wonderful, and came into the theatre early in the morning; at which time the silver of his garment being illuminated by the fresh reflection of the sun's rays upon it, shone out after a surprising manner, and was so resplendent as to spread a horror over those that looked intently upon him: and presently his flatterers cried out, one from one place, and another from another, (though not for his good,) that he was a god: and they added,—'Be thou merciful to us; for although we have hitherto reverenced thee only as a man, yet shall we henceforth own thee as superior to mortal nature.' Upon this the king did neither rebuke them, nor reject their impious flattery. But, as he presently afterwards looked up, he saw an owl sitting on a certain rope over his head, and immediately understood that this bird was the messenger of ill tidings, as it had once been the messenger of good tidings to him; and fell into the deepest sorrow. A severe pain also arose in his belly, and began in a most violent manner. He therefore looked upon his friends, and said,—'I, whom you call a god, am commanded presently to depart this life; while Providence thus reproves the lying words you just now said to me; and I, who was by you called immortal, am immediately to be hurried away by death'" (p. 412).
Herod's temper and the physical condition which accompanied it are also described in gruesome detail in Antiq. 7:6:5.
The Jerome Biblical Commentary (vol. 2, p. 191) informs us that these gruesome details of a person's death was ancient writer's way of showing what happens to those who offend God.
1. Antiochus IV Epiphanes – 2Ma_9:5-18
2. Herod the Great – Josephus, Antiq. 17.6.5
Act_12:23 "the angel of the Lord" This refers to the Death Angel (cf. Exo_12:23; 2Sa_24:16; 2Ki_19:35). Death is in the hands of God, not Satan. This is an example of temporal judgment.