Last Days at Capernaum

154:0.1On the event­ful Sat­ur­day night of April 30, as Je­sus was speak­ing words of com­fort and cour­age to his down­cast and be­wil­dered dis­ci­ples, at Tiberias a coun­cil was be­ing held be­tween Herod An­tipas and a group of spe­cial com­mis­sion­ers rep­re­sent­ing the Je­ru­sa­lem San­hedrin. These scribes and Phar­isees urged Herod to ar­rest Je­sus; they did their best to con­vince him that Je­sus was stir­ring up the pop­u­lace to dis­sen­sion and even to re­bel­lion. But Herod re­fused to take ac­tion against him as a po­lit­i­cal of­fender. Herod’s ad­vis­ers had cor­rectly re­ported the episode across the lake when the peo­ple sought to pro­claim Je­sus king and how he re­jected the pro­posal.

154:0.2One of Herod’s of­fi­cial fam­ily, Chuza, whose wife be­longed to the women’s min­is­ter­ing corps, had in­formed him that Je­sus did not pro­pose to med­dle with the af­fairs of earthly rule; that he was only con­cerned with the es­tab­lish­ment of the spir­i­tual broth­er­hood of his be­liev­ers, which broth­er­hood he called the king­dom of heaven. Herod had con­fi­dence in Chuza’s re­ports, so much so that he re­fused to in­ter­fere with Je­sus’ ac­tiv­i­ties. Herod was also in­flu­enced at this time, in his at­ti­tude to­ward Je­sus, by his su­per­sti­tious fear of John the Bap­tist. Herod was one of those apos­tate Jews who, while he be­lieved noth­ing, feared ev­ery­thing. He had a bad con­science for hav­ing put John to death, and he did not want to be­come en­tan­gled in these in­trigues against Je­sus. He knew of many cases of sick­ness which had been ap­par­ently healed by Je­sus, and he re­garded him as ei­ther a prophet or a rel­a­tively harm­less re­li­gious fa­natic.

154:0.3When the Jews threat­ened to re­port to Cae­sar that he was shield­ing a traitorous sub­ject, Herod or­dered them out of his coun­cil cham­ber. Thus mat­ters rested for one week, dur­ing which time Je­sus pre­pared his fol­low­ers for the im­pend­ing dis­per­sion.