Last Days at Capernaum

154:3.1On May 16 the sec­ond con­fer­ence at Tiberias be­tween the au­thor­i­ties at Je­ru­sa­lem and Herod An­tipas was con­vened. Both the re­li­gious and the po­lit­i­cal lead­ers from Je­ru­sa­lem were in at­ten­dance. The Jew­ish lead­ers were able to re­port to Herod that prac­ti­cally all the syn­a­gogues in both Gal­i­lee and Judea were closed to Je­sus’ teach­ings. A new ef­fort was made to have Herod place Je­sus un­der ar­rest, but he re­fused to do their bid­ding. On May 18, how­ever, Herod did agree to the plan of per­mit­ting the San­hedrin au­thor­i­ties to seize Je­sus and carry him to Je­ru­sa­lem to be tried on re­li­gious charges, pro­vided the Ro­man ruler of Judea con­curred in such an ar­range­ment. Mean­while, Je­sus’ en­e­mies were in­dus­tri­ously spread­ing the ru­mor through­out Gal­i­lee that Herod had be­come hos­tile to Je­sus, and that he meant to ex­ter­mi­nate all who be­lieved in his teach­ings.

154:3.2On Sat­ur­day night, May 21, word reached Tiberias that the civil au­thor­i­ties at Je­ru­sa­lem had no ob­jec­tion to the agree­ment be­tween Herod and the Phar­isees that Je­sus be seized and car­ried to Je­ru­sa­lem for trial be­fore the San­hedrin on charges of flout­ing the sa­cred laws of the Jew­ish na­tion. Ac­cord­ingly, just be­fore mid­night of this day, Herod signed the de­cree which au­tho­rized the of­fi­cers of the San­hedrin to seize Je­sus within Herod’s do­mains and forcibly to carry him to Je­ru­sa­lem for trial. Strong pres­sure from many sides was brought to bear upon Herod be­fore he con­sented to grant this per­mis­sion, and he well knew that Je­sus could not ex­pect a fair trial be­fore his bit­ter en­e­mies at Je­ru­sa­lem.