Herod, The Not So Great?

 



Ask most Christians about Herod the Great and they will likely refer you to the story in Matthew Chapter 2: magi (wise men, the word is related to ‘magician’), come from afar, to worship the newborn king (Jesus).


After they had found the young Jesus in Bethlehem and given him their gifts, the magi decided to skip a second visit to Herod on the return leg of their journey: they understood that he wished the boy no good.


SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS

They were spot on. Herod soon sent soldiers to the town to massacre all the infants two years old and under. But Joseph, Jesus’ adoptive father, had heard in advance from God this would happen. He removed his family to safety in Egypt ahead of time.

CRUEL KING

Through this brief story, we get a snapshot of the violent tyrant Herod the Great was. He was a client king of the Roman Empire whose rule over Judea from 37 BCE to 4 BCE was marked by cruelty and oppressive taxation of his people. He also executed his wife, Miriamme, having accused her of adultery.

And yet he was behind a series of marvelous building projects that remain with us to this day.

JERUSALEM TEMPLE



Jerusalem’s Western Wall, formerly known as the Wailing Wall, was part of the glorious Temple he built, with its vast Court of the Gentiles, exclusively Jewish areas and great curtain draped across the entry to the Holy of Holies. This curtain would be torn at the moment Jesus died on the cross, symbolizing that we now have direct access to God, through Jesus.

Despite the quasi-universal hatred of the late Herod the Great, the Temple, with its famous ‘forest’ of white columns in Solomon’s Colonnade, was proudly admired by his disciples. Jesus acknowledged the Temple as, “My Father’s house.”

MASADA



Other palaces built by Herod survive as ruins, including Masada from which it is possible to look out across the salt-rimmed Dead Sea, all the way to Jordan. In the opposite direction lies the seemingly endless Negev Desert.

CAESAREA



Caesarea, on the Mediterranean coast between Tel Aviv and Haifa, is a port and Roman-style city conceived and built by Herod. Paul and Luke landing there ultimately led to the former’s 2-year imprisonment in Herod’s Palace. Caesarea was the home of the Philip who converted the high-ranking Ethiopian slave, and his four daughters, all of whom prophesied. And of Cornelius, the Roman centurion whose household Peter brought to faith. Cornelius is said to have gone on to become Bishop of Caesarea.

We can imagine a Christian congregation under the leadership of Roman Cornelius and Jewish Philip there. Possibly it would have been frequented by Luke and Paul himself. This congregation surely was a shining example of the love and tolerance Paul advocated, yet Caesarea was well-known for the fighting that went on between the town’s Romans and Jews.

Two thousand years on, we can still see the legacy of Herod, all over Judea. He expressed his power through architecture. Yet we do not know what he looked like. He is depicted in early Christian art as a bearded man with a cloak, but we have no reliable portrait of him.

A PAINFUL DEATH

Few, if any, mourned him when he died at the age of seventy, a painful death. Jewish first century historian Josephus describes his symptoms as:
“an ulceration of the intestines with particularly terrible pains in the colon… There was a malignancy in the abdominal area, as well as a putrefaction in the private member which was creating worms.”

Yuck!

As his body failed him, his sanity also suffered. He lived in terror of being murdered or overthrown: a paranoia we can readily observe in the megalomaniacs of today.

 


Bobbie Ann Cole is a writer, speaker, teacher and book coach who is about to  return to study at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

If you would like to keep abreast of what she learns and where she goes in Israel, please sign up to receive her updates at http://scrollchest.com. You will also receive her free, 5 Minute Testimony: How I Met Jesus. It started at a Jerusalem church service where, as a Jew, Bobbie thought she wasn’t supposed to be.

Comments

  1. Interesting, Bobbie, that we can write people off in history and yet they still achieved important things which have been greatly admired. It just goes to show that God does use everyone to achieve his purposes.

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    1. I agree, Sheila. I'm sure our fave Russian will go down in history, too.

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  2. This is absolutely fascinating, Bobbie. So Henry VIII was not the only king who had his wife executed for (supposed or actual) adultery! And he too expressed his power with architecture; for many of our naval forts along our coasts, and many palaces in England are of Tudor origin commissioned by Henry VIII. We certainly cannot get away from the fact that tyranny can coexist in the human heart along with great works which are awesome and uplifting to many through all the following centuries. Human beings are very complex. Nobody knew that better than Jesus. I quite often think of his words, "Be as wise as a serpent and innocent as a dove." But the story you remind us of is also powerful in the sense that if we listen to God through dreams and through all the other ways God uses, we can indeed avert some of the worse consequences of the evil of others in our lives. (Sheila aka SC Skillman)

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    1. Thank you for your insightful comments, Sheila. I particularly liked that "tyranny can coexist in the human heart along with great works." And that dreams can be powerful guidance from God.

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  3. Lovely post, Bobbie! Thanks. I remember a time in my youth when I actually thought he was Roman! I remember being shocked to realise he was Jewish. He died such a horrible death that seemed like nemesis for the horrible crime he committed against innocent children. Not so great, I agree!! Blessings.

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    1. You are not alone in thinking Herod was Roman. He certainly kowtowed to the Romans.

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