Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadChrist In His Suffering, Trial, and Crucified by Klaas Schilder: Schilder, Klaas - Vol 2 - Christ on Trial: 20. Chapter 20: Christ Before Herod: Israel Before Esau
TOPIC: Schilder, Klaas - Vol 2 - Christ on Trial (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 20. Chapter 20: Christ Before Herod: Israel Before Esau
Other Subjects in this Topic:
C H A P T E R T W E N T Y
Christ Before Herod: Israel Before Esau
When Pilate heard of Galilee, he asked whether the man were a Galilean. And as soon as he knew that he belonged unto Herod’s jurisdiction, he sent him to Herod who himself also was at Jerusalem at that time.
—Luk_23:6-7.
JURISDICTION over Christ Jesus has already changed hands several times. He passed from Annas to Caiaphas, from Caiaphas to Pilate.
Today they will take Him farther — from Pilate to Herod. But even this does not mark the end.
The question arises: Is this recurring shift of jurisdiction merely accidental?
It is not. It is an expression of the wise counsel of God, and also of God’s exalted justice. We must know that all things in the world must co-operate in pronouncing the death sentence upon Christ. Every manifestation of human, social life, every classification of the life of the world, every modus vivendi must say to the Christ: Do Thou go out and die.
That is why it is necessary for Him to appear before Annas and Caiaphas; that is, before the older and the younger generation in Israel. That is why He must appear before Pilate, the representative of Rome, the world empire. And that is also the reason for which He must appear in the presence of Herod, the false brother. Herod, remember, is an Idumean; we must think of him as belonging to the line of Edom, and must in our thinking associate him with Esau.
Christ’s appearance before Herod, therefore, represents the appearance in judgment of Jacob, who is called Israel, before Esau. Had Esau’s voice been silent in that last chorus of all the great singers in the oratorio of death, who, tearless, gnashing their teeth and mocking, take their places presently at the grave of Jesus — had Esau’s voice been silent among those, the judgment of the world and of the flesh against the elect of God would have been incomplete.
We all know the history of the situation. Pilate had heard that Christ had begun His activity in Galilee; mention had been made of that fact by the accusing voices of the Sanhedrin. A person who finds himself in an embarrassing situation develops a keen sense of hearing, and Pilate, too, has a discriminating ear at this time. For he finds himself in circumstances which are very annoying. Hence he is heartily glad that the place of Jesus’ origin, namely Galilee, allows him an opportunity according to the letter of the law to escape from the responsibility of this case. He makes it a point to ask again and to ask definitely whether it is really true that Jesus comes from Galilee, or whether He at least belongs to the legal jurisdiction of that province. And when it appears that the Nazarene by reason of his background and early activity, both of which were centered in Galilee, could officially be regarded as a Galilean, Pilate decides to call Herod into this strange case.
Now Herod, or more exactly, Herod Antipas, was a tetrarch, a governor of Galilee and Perea, even though he bore the name of king officiously rather than officially.
As it happened, there was a regulation at the time which had it that an accused person might be tried in any of three places: at the place of his birth, at the place where he established his residence, or at the place in which he had committed his crime. According to this regulation, more than one basis could be named to justify calling the tetrarch of Galilee into the trial of Jesus. Accordingly, Pilate, who is eager to take that course decides to have Jesus appear before Herod. Now it happens that Herod is in Jerusalem at this time. The Passover is about to be celebrated and Herod has expressed an eagerness to celebrate it with the Jews. In this way Pilate, even if he cannot escape from responsibility in the case altogether, can at least share it with the other official.
Thus Jesus appears before Herod. Now, as we have stated already, we discover a parallel in this meeting: Christ appears be fore Herod; in other words, Jacob-Israel is ushered into the presence of Herod-Esau.
Christ-Jacob. Herod-Esau. Those are the contrasts, those the parallelisms. Have they been arbitrarily contrasted? Many thinkers have spoken and written in the sense of such parallels. Herod has often been associated with Esau, Christ with Jacob-Israel. And there is good reason for such alignments.
The name Herod is not entirely strange to us. The Bible never uses that word without bordering it with crepe. The Herods all belonged to a renowned family who were of an Idumean origin. If we remember, now, that the term Idumean is identical in meaning with the term Edomite, and if we recall also that the name Edom is identical with the name Esau, it will not seem strange to us to learn that theologians long ago associated Herod with Esau in their thinking, and that a parallelism was pointed out between Jesus-Herod and Jacob-Esau.
We should, however, be doing truth an injustice if we failed to raise objections against this method of thinking about the gospel of the passion and against the habit of looking for parallelisms on the part of those who discover them too facilely. There are people who cannot keep from smiling when they see these efforts at relating the conflict between Jesus and Herod to the ancient dualism between Jacob and Esau. How many centuries — so these proud observers like to say — have not elapsed since Jacob and Esau quarrelled about their birthright?
Besides, they add, who can actually prove that Herod the Idumean, or if you wish, the Edomite, was a descendant of Esau? Remember, they suggest, that the Peoples of the Old Testament were dispersed over the whole world. Not only is their genealogy uncertain, therefore, but many of those who belonged to one country have mingled with the people of another. Hence no one can say definitely that this or that people has sprung from a given ancestor. So goes the clever, dispassionately scientific argument of these observers.
Counter contentions follow in quick succession. For instance, it is said that Herod belongs to a generation which presumably came from Ashkelon. That would mean that the Herods were descendants of the Philistines. And it would certainly be difficult — so runs the argument of one commentator — to point out the genealogical continuity between the Philistines and Esau. Comes another who remarks very learnedly: As for those Edomites . . . yes, it may be that Esau was called Edom for various reasons, but the Bible itself points out that by no means all of the Edomites were genuine descendants of Esau, even though the “sons of Esau” are subsumed under that head. A third critic calls our attention to the fact that Amalek, for example, is also associated with Edom in certain references of the Bible (This accounts for the fact that the conflict between Amalek and Israel is regarded by many as an after-effect and continuation of the old Esau- Jacob struggle), but — this critic goes on — in other references the Bible proves to us that there were Amalekites who were in no way related to Esau by ties of blood.
After all of these arguments have been presented to you in a scientifically “objective” manner, you are asked whether you are not going too far afield when you state that a parallelism exists between the meeting of Christ with Herod and that ancient struggle between Jacob and Esau.
We feel inclined to reply that the Bible knows all that very well. The very fact that the Bible itself presents the data raised in these arguments should make all those who use such contentions against the traditional reference of Herod to Esau very cautious, for if such reference of what is taking place here in this unique moment between Jesus and Herod to the conflict of Jacob and Esau were the product purely of human allegorizations or of the arbitrary habit of seeking out “parallelisms,” we should indeed have to protest strongly against looking so far back for the beginning of the threads of history.
But it is obvious that the Scriptures themselves, not only in this particular moment but throughout the centuries, see in this conflict between Israel, on the one hand, and the Edomites, or the Idumeans, on the other, a recurrence, or better, a continuation and culmination of the old conflict between Jacob and Esau.
This is no wonder, surely. The Bible, in delineating the methods of revelation employed by the Spirit, does not limit itself to ties of blood, as though the spheres of revelation juxtapose precisely with those of the blood or permit themselves to be bound by the limitations of the flesh. No, natural birth, flesh and blood, do not circumscribe the domain of election and reprobation. The opposite is true. The God who is present in that antithesis between election and reprobation, faith and unbelief, spirit and flesh, the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent — that God circumscribes the boundaries of flesh and blood. He makes the paths of the Spirit manifest in the meandering ways of natural life; He makes the whole of nature the working-ground of the Spirit. All of the antitheses named above may be discovered in nature, if only we explain nature in terms of the spirit, and not the spirit in terms of nature. Because the clash between Jacob and Esau has found an historical, a predestined sequel in each successive age, therefore the record of that clash must run through all of their generations. That is why in the evolution of tribes and nations, groups will define themselves according to the same law of antithesis which operated in Jacob, the chosen one, and in Esau, the reprobate.
Yet the Bible itself knows very well that the collective title Amalek includes others besides the sons of Esau, and others besides the sons of Edom. The Bible knows that there is such a thing as a spiritual communion which inheres in successive generations, and that a choice must be made for good or for evil; the Bible knows that there is an entering into fellowship with the seed of the woman or a coming into communion with the seed of the serpent.
It is precisely because the prophetic Spirit is operative in history, and because the Bible hears that Spirit testify in history, that the Bible does not allow the blueprints for the building of the Spirit to be drawn up by a pen of the blood, but, on the contrary, has it prepared by the Spirit Himself. Such — in the language of men —·is the haughtiness of the Spirit of prophecy. The flesh — to speak in the terms of evolution — does not govern the Spirit, but the Spirit — to speak in the terms of revelation — rules over the flesh. That is why the “gathering together of Esau” in the broadest sense of the phrase is opposing itself to Israel. Under the name of Esau or of Edom the Bible groups together all those who have in the course of history moved in Esau’s direction, have intermarried with him, or have formed a coalition with him against the God of Israel. And this grouping together of all those tribes and fragments of peoples under the general title Esau is not a genealogical coincidence, but a prophetic infallibility.
Hence, because of the Spirit, that was a true interpretation of the course of events which Israel’s historiography gave when it named the conflict which God had appointed between Jacob and Esau the one and thoroughgoing conflict of the succeeding generations. Such it was designated to be, both in the apocryphal[1] and in the canonical writings.
[1] In these, too, “remnants” of revealed truth are contained.
We should have to go too far afield if we were to point out every instance in which that immemorial conflict between Jacob-Israel and Edom-Esau manifested itself in these successive generations. It suffices here to call attention to the struggle between Amalek and Israel; to the warfare conducted by the Midianites, a people belonging to the classification of “Edom,” against Israel; to the war carried on by Doeg against David; to the conflict waged by Hadad against the throne of David; to many revolutions, constantly occurring, on the part of Edom against David’s rule; to the prophecy of Isaiah in which an oppressed voice from Seir, Esau’s hill country, asks when the night will cease in which the prophet must tell the mountain dwellers of Edom that for them morning has not yet dawned; and, finally, to that very remarkable struggle between Haman and Mordecai.
In reference to this last conflict, we must state that in the book of Esther Haman is called an Agagite. Now Agag is also to be associated with Edom. For a long time the Amalekites were subject to a royal house whose members all officially bore the collective title of Agagites. Hence the conflict between Haman the Agagite and Mordecai is a revival, and a sharply accentuated one at that, of the old antithesis between Israel and Esau, a conflict in which Israel, who properly belongs to the classification of Edom, forms the historical connecting link. This fact is so obvious that in the apocryphal as well as in the canonical books the fierce struggle between Haman and Mordecai is set down in the light of that ancient and immemorial struggle. In the apocryphal literature, the bitter hatred obtaining between the Agagite, Haman, and the Jew, Mordecai, is depicted as a battle between dragons. In other words, the struggle between those two is in that literature set down as having gigantic proportions; it is transposed from the small domain of human malice and jealousy to the broader spheres of the immemorial conflict between the primal powers of the world. Can anyone say, moreover, that the Bible itself in the canonical book of Esther does anything less than this? No, indeed. This book opens up similar perspectives. In this small book Israel’s kingship is indeed depicted as having degenerated and been destroyed according to the flesh; but note that it tells us also, when the hewn-down stem of Israel’s kingship, of Jacob’s beautiful inheritance, seems to be left alone, unfruitful, and twice dead, God discovers the marvelous influences of His extraordinary providence. The spirit of Esau-Agag-Haman may attempt to destroy Jacob but it cannot succeed in the attempt. Mordecai who bears within himself the flesh of “Jacob” and the spirit of “Israel” triumphs over Haman after a while. He triumphs over Esau. Esau may demand Jacob’s birthright again and again, and it may be that this birthright sometimes reverts to Esau entirely on this or that occasion, but by way of faith and repentance, and by way of a spiritual struggle for the real essence of the seed of the woman, that birthright will remain Jacob’s, Israel’s into all eternity.
Yes, by way of the Messiah, the birthright will remain Israel’s.
Balaam once said something which is quite in harmony with these truths. When Balaam had to prophesy for Balak, he saw and described the struggle in which Israel was involved in the concrete embodiments which that struggle took in his own time. His vision was authentic as the vision of prophets is, even of those who are prophets against their own will. Amalek’s attack upon Israel’s retreating camp had taken place but a short time before. Agag — taken now as the collective title for all of the kings of Amalek — had taken up the sword against Israel. In other words, and in a deeper sense, Esau had again attempted to get his birthright back from Jacob. For “Esau” cannot reconcile himself to the fact that he has given his birthright away. The transaction which took place between Jacob and Esau, by which Jacob won the birthright, was ever lamented by Esau, and the prophetic record of history never tires of showing how in the conflict of Israel against “greater Edom” the old feud between Jacob and his brother is revived again and again.
Just what are these two quarreling about? We have already indicated the answer: The feud concerns the birthright. According to the good pleasure of God’s sovereign election that birthright was Jacob’s due. But Esau cannot reconcile himself to Jacob’s having it. When the Spirit of prophecy acting through Balaam’s agency presently thunders, it announces that Israel’s kingship shall be exalted above that of A gag.
That, surely, was a significant prophecy. Somewhere down in the valley there might be found a little group of disordered Israelites. Nomads, exiles they were, without any certain political affiliation, without a fixed dwelling place, their property stolen. Nevertheless Balaam sees these robbed and roving people develop into a nation having a well-ordered political system. He notices that this people will receive a king, and he also sees that this kingship of Israel’s future will far transcend the power of Agag, and greatly supersede the strength of Amalek and of Edom. He obits prerogatives over against Esau.
Edom’s fires of wrath may flame
Against the glory of God’s name,
But God will bow his head in shame;
And Edom, all his boasting done,
Will see the crowned Jacob’s Son.
In other words, the prophecy of Balaam may be interpreted in this way: In the future the generation of Jacob — thanks to its eschatological king—will possess the birthright and will exercise its prerogatives over against Esau.
We have alluded to but a few instances of this age-old feud between Jacob and Esau. No, this is not a game of allegory; nor is it a far-fetched “type” study. It is the effect of the fact of election and reprobation. Whoever sees the antithesis of election and reprobation going on between Jacob and Esau, he will be the one to see the real meaning of that conflict. If we can detect in this meeting of Esau and Jacob, of Herod and Jesus, only a chronological continuity, we will not see half as much significance in it, as he who sees the shadow of Jacob and Esau playing behind Jesus and Herod. But if we acknowledge according to the rule of faith that the Logos and the Spirit use all that history brings forth as a stage and sphere of operation for the law of election and reprobation, we shall be guilty of gross ignorance, if we fail to find in this meeting of Herod and Christ a fulfillment of the former meeting of Esau and Jacob. What, pray, is Jacob’s role in the world, if God’s purpose for him is not related to the appearing of the Christ? The womb of the seed of the woman gives him birth solely in order that in and through him Christ may make His appearance.
Thus it is that the Logos drives Jesus into Esau’s presence. Jacob’s great Son stands in the presence of the epigone of Esau. He stands there bound and fettered. The concealment of God in the man Christ Jesus, in the incarnation of the Word, is now having its effects. It is expressing itself more specifically in this concealment of Jacob’s birthright, of the birthright of the firstborn, in the man Christ Jesus. God, and the seed of the woman, and the Spirit of election, and the Word of God’s sovereign good pleasure, and the calling by the free grace of God — all these are contained in the humanity of Jesus. The wind blows under the canvases of the tent in which Jacob once dealt with Esau about the birthright. The tent pins are being jerked away. Alas, Jacob stands empty-handed under the naked sky. There is nothing which he can call his inheritance.
Now something must happen to Jacob. Just as Jacob once trembled as he awaited the coming of Esau after Jacob had squandered the birthright, and just as he could regain that right only by a struggle with God at Peniel, so Christ stands before Herod. He is bound; He bears the burdens of His father Jacob, and is able to achieve His birthright only by a struggle with God. Come, Father, struggle against Him: vent pugnator spiritus. Hurl Jacob to the ground, Father; He must experience His Peniel. God must attack Him. O God of all history, wrench more than His thigh out of joint; bruise His heels, for He is a Jacob having no rights. Esau rules in Herod now. And Jacob in Christ Jesus is a poor, robbed, manacled, and despised Man. Moreover this Christ-Jacob has no rights in the world; He can make no claims. He stands in Edom’s presence, and can only wait. Does Esau come in peace? Alas, he is heavily armed. But the Christ is the outlaw. He stands in the presence of Esau: see, His cheeks are still burning. He who is the Bearer of the birthright had to enter the world as one having no form or comeliness, as a foolish and offensive one, as the butt of ridicule to the Esau who has only carnal eyes with which to look upon the flesh. For Esau lives in that vicious circle described by a life whose boundaries are drawn up in terms of the flesh.
Today Jacob appears quite naked. Thou art very beautiful, Thou Man of sorrows, Thou art very beautiful. For Thou art here to bear the burdens of Jacob. Therefore Thou hast neither form today nor beauty. That face which has been spat upon, that head which has been bent low, and that humiliated body is nothing but the limping thigh of Jacob. But — O divine Grace — this is Jacob’s thigh removed from the course of that vicious circle which bandied Father Jacob and his lost generation to and fro for centuries in that interminable struggle with Esau, Edom Amalek, Doeg, Haman, and Balaam. For it is evident, O great Son of Jacob, that Thou must enter into an absolute death. The tedious round of the strife between Jacob and Esau will be broken now. Whether it fail or succeed the attack will be conclusive. Esau must see that God is punishing Thee today. Yes, he himself may raise the sword against Thee, O Thou great Son of Israel.
Remember this: Esau must know that Jacob is not chosen for Jacob’s sake. Esau must know that Jacob has been chosen because of the good pleasure of God, and he must know that God punishes all of Jacob’s sins in Jesus Christ who is Jacob’s Son and Lord. Yes, Esau must acknowledge that this is not merely a verbal truth, must confess that election comes solely by reason of God’s good pleasure. And this, of course, means that God can not find as much as one of His reasons for choosing Jacob in Jacob himself. Therefore everything that is Jacob’s must enter into an absolute death today. Heaven and earth must testify now that Jacob can keep nothing because of the strength of his own hands, or in virtue of his own powers. The limping thigh with which Jacob began his journey to the land of his inheritance was the beginning of the history of the passion. For Jacob and Christ are one. Hence that history of the passion must reach its culmination today in the bruised heels with which Jacob in Christ Jesus will finish his course.
Yes, Esau must see and must acknowledge today that to be chosen means to be heavily laden.
That is why Esau may put the great Son of Jacob to death. For it was this Son with whom God was concerned long ago in the tent in which Jacob prepared the mess of pottage and in which Esau consumed it. For Esau has too long forgotten that God calls His Jacob — to be blessed, yes, but also to serve. The elect — that is a title of honor. But that honorable name has this synonym also: the heavily laden one. And this is the translation, the all too faithful one, which occupied the mind of Jacob too little, which was never understood by Esau, and which is neither appreciated nor understood by Jacob’s carnal posterity today. Does not every Jew cry aloud: We are the chosen people? And do you hear any voice which adds the conclusion: Therefore we are the heavily burdened people? Nevertheless, election means calling, privilege implies task, “to may” is “to must,” or, as the Germans say, Gabe ist Aufgabe. But Jacob in the persons of his Christ-accusing sons is still priding himself in the flesh.
But of all those children of Jacob there is that one who does understand that election involves service, obligation, and the burden of the Lord. That One is the Christ, the great Son of Jacob.
Accordingly, He must wrestle with God. He must experience His Peniel. And remember that Peniel is the place of the spiritual wrestling for the gifts of the sovereign election.
What we are witnessing today, therefore, is the entrance of Peniel into Herod’s house. The mystery of Peniel re-enacts itself in the courtroom of Herod. There it reaches its denouement; there it comes to rest. When Peniel still had its place near the Jabbok, God did indeed struggle against Jacob, but Esau stood at a distance. That was an instance of the grace of God which allowed Jacob to have done with God before entering into judgment with Esau.
But here in the place of Herod Antipas, Esau stands directly in front of Jacob. Again God struggles with Jacob in Christ, inasmuch as He has been made the curse because of Jacob’s sin. But today the law of Peniel becomes even more difficult to understand than it was long ago at the side of the Jabbok. In this hour of Christ’s presence before Herod-Esau, God does not begin to punish and to bruise, for God on this occasion is terrible in His silence. Esau scolds and gnashes his teeth; he grimly gnashes his teeth, and he will not put up the sword of his tongue.
Now the great task of Christ as the absolute Son of father Jacob is that in His spirit He will be so perfectly occupied with God, will so see things from a theocentric point of view and so live them, that He will see Himself standing behind Herod, will hear God’s own voice speaking in Herod’s verdict, and will feel the hand of God in the blows of Esau which are wounding His thigh and bruising His heel.
Peniel, O incomparable grace. Here I see Jacob quailing and Jesus trembling. Oh, blows of God! O matchless grace! It is better for Thee, Jacob’s Son, to fall into God’s hands than into the hands of men. In Peniel, God struck thee, O Jacob, and it was a magnanimous grace. It is better to be beaten by God than by Esau, is it not, father Jacob? But today God conceals Himself and lets Herod persist in the beating, and God tells Thee Thou Son of Jacob, that Thou must be silent in the presence of Thy judge, inasmuch as He who is beating Thee through the agency of Herod-Esau is none other than Thy God. In this resplendent palace in which the reeking stench of sin and uprighteousness is striking Thee full in the face, Thou must experience Thy Peniel, and must say to Thy God: I will be silent, I will not open my mouth. But I shall not let Thee go until Thou bless me. I shall not let Thee go until Thou prepare the room of the Passover for me, and a first-born from the dead. . . .
The allegory is a striking one, is it not? Still, we have not plumbed its deepest, deepest depths. The deepest depth of Christ’s suffering in its absolute mystery is that God is not beating Himself, is punishing and warring against Himself. And that same mystery we witness here now.
Just who, after all, was it that wrenched Jacob’s thigh out of place at Peniel and struggled with Him until dawn? Who else but the Logos, the Eternal Word, The Son, as He made His appearance and worked His influence among the children of special revelation before His appearance in the flesh? Yes, it was the second person of the holy Trinity that wounded Jacob in the dark hour of Peniel. He struck Jacob’s flesh in order to emancipate the Spirit of Israel from Jacob. But now the Son must bear His own burden. Taking Jacob’s place today He must approach Esau and say to him: Beat me, I pray, beat me. In Herod-Esau He must see the God who is legally punishing Him. Hence He must inflict blows upon Himself—God is punishing God. No, that is not too far-fetched, for these matters lie ready at hand in the suffering Christ. Just as the priest and the sacrifice become one in Jesus Christ, so the smiting Judge and smitten flesh become one in Him. Just as in Christ He who offers, offers Himself, so the night of Peniel is being fulfilled there where the Son inflicts the blows upon Himself which once He inflicted upon Jacob.
This is the great joy, and this is the great grief. This is the exalted mystery, by which God assigns to Himself the blows which He inflicted upon the flesh of Jacob. For Jacob was called into being and was beaten solely because he bore the Christ in his loins. The sprained thigh, the bruised heel, Jacob, Christ, Esau and Jacob, Herod and the great God, the eternal absolute good pleasure and the full round of life—these all can be grouped together, for the Word was made flesh, and the incarnation of the Word is the only interpretive principle of all the mystery of this world.
Bow low, bow very low, O son of man, before the mystery of redemption which is in Christ Jesus. God is in hiding; zenith and nadir, the climbing of official heights and the bending low in the vale of the martyrs are one and the same thing. Do you yourselves say now whether such nonsense to the unregenerate mind is not an expression of the vision of God? Can it astonish you, then, that the kingship of Israel is exalted above that of Agag in the very moment in which that kingship was humiliated before it? Ah, Mordecai must be sent to the gallows: I mean that Mordecai’s Mediator must be nailed to the tree of disgrace. Only then will Haman who also is Esau walk before Christ’s white horse. Only then will the red horse of Esau’s vaunt of war lead in the victory march of Christ’s white horse of triumph. Who would miss Herod’s intermezzo? For all the threads of history come together in it.