Herod Antipas

• position › son of Herod the Great; governed Galilee and Perea during Jesus’ youth and ministry
• rebuilt Sepphoris and cities of Galilee

121:2.11Herod built the har­bor of Cae­sarea, which fur­ther aided in mak­ing Pales­tine the cross­roads of the civ­i­lized world. He died in 4 B.C., and his son Herod An­tipas gov­erned Gal­i­lee and Perea dur­ing Je­sus’ youth and min­istry to A.D. 39. An­tipas, like his fa­ther, was a great builder. He re­built many of the cities of Gal­i­lee, in­clud­ing the im­por­tant trade cen­ter of Sep­pho­ris.

122:10.1But the watch­ers for Herod were not in­ac­tive. When they re­ported to him the visit of the priests of Ur to Beth­le­hem, Herod sum­moned these Chaldeans to ap­pear be­fore him. He in­quired dili­gently of these wise men about the new “king of the Jews,” but they gave him lit­tle sat­is­fac­tion, ex­plain­ing that the babe had been born of a woman who had come down to Beth­le­hem with her hus­band for the cen­sus en­roll­ment. Herod, not be­ing sat­is­fied with this an­swer, sent them forth with a purse and di­rected that they should find the child so that he too might come and wor­ship him, since they had de­clared that his king­dom was to be spir­i­tual, not tem­po­ral. But when the wise men did not re­turn, Herod grew sus­pi­cious. As he turned these things over in his mind, his in­form­ers re­turned and made full re­port of the re­cent oc­cur­rences in the tem­ple, bring­ing him a copy of parts of the Sim­eon song which had been sung at the re­demp­tion cer­e­monies of Je­sus. But they had failed to fol­low Joseph and Mary, and Herod was very an­gry with them when they could not tell him whither the pair had taken the babe. He then dis­patched searchers to lo­cate Joseph and Mary. Know­ing Herod pur­sued the Naz­a­reth fam­ily, Zach­a­rias and Eliz­a­beth re­mained away from Beth­le­hem. The boy baby was se­creted with Joseph’s rel­a­tives.

122:10.2Joseph was afraid to seek work, and their small sav­ings were rapidly dis­ap­pear­ing. Even at the time of the pu­rifi­ca­tion cer­e­monies at the tem­ple, Joseph deemed him­self suf­fi­ciently poor to war­rant his of­fer­ing for Mary two young pi­geons as Moses had di­rected for the pu­rifi­ca­tion of moth­ers among the poor.

122:10.3When, af­ter more than a year of search­ing, Herod’s spies had not lo­cated Je­sus, and be­cause of the sus­pi­cion that the babe was still con­cealed in Beth­le­hem, he pre­pared an or­der di­rect­ing that a sys­tem­atic search be made of ev­ery house in Beth­le­hem, and that all boy ba­bies un­der two years of age should be killed. In this man­ner Herod hoped to make sure that this child who was to be­come “king of the Jews” would be de­stroyed. And thus per­ished in one day six­teen boy ba­bies in Beth­le­hem of Judea. But in­trigue and mur­der, even in his own im­me­di­ate fam­ily, were com­mon oc­cur­rences at the court of Herod.

122:10.4The mas­sacre of these in­fants took place about the mid­dle of Oc­to­ber, 6 B.C., when Je­sus was a lit­tle over one year of age. But there were be­liev­ers in the com­ing Mes­siah even among Herod’s court attachés, and one of these, learn­ing of the or­der to slaugh­ter the Beth­le­hem boy ba­bies, com­mu­ni­cated with Zach­a­rias, who in turn dis­patched a mes­sen­ger to Joseph; and the night be­fore the mas­sacre Joseph and Mary de­parted from Beth­le­hem with the babe for Alexan­dria in Egypt. In or­der to avoid at­tract­ing at­ten­tion, they jour­neyed alone to Egypt with Je­sus. They went to Alexan­dria on funds pro­vided by Zach­a­rias, and there Joseph worked at his trade while Mary and Je­sus lodged with well-to-do rel­a­tives of Joseph’s fam­ily. They so­journed in Alexan­dria two full years, not re­turn­ing to Beth­le­hem un­til af­ter the death of Herod.

• Joseph preferred H.A. to Archelaus

123:0.5Mary had never fully given up the idea that Je­sus ought to grow up in Beth­le­hem, the City of David. Joseph did not re­ally be­lieve that their son was to be­come a kingly de­liv­erer of Is­rael. Be­sides, he knew that he him­self was not re­ally a de­scen­dant of David; that his be­ing reck­oned among the off­spring of David was due to the adop­tion of one of his an­ces­tors into the Da­vidic line of de­scent. Mary, of course, thought the City of David the most ap­pro­pri­ate place in which the new can­di­date for David’s throne could be reared, but Joseph pre­ferred to take chances with Herod An­tipas rather than with his brother Archelaus. He en­ter­tained great fears for the child’s safety in Beth­le­hem or in any other city in Judea, and sur­mised that Archelaus would be more likely to pur­sue the men­ac­ing poli­cies of his fa­ther, Herod, than would An­tipas in Gal­i­lee. And be­sides all these rea­sons, Joseph was out­spo­ken in his pref­er­ence for Gal­i­lee as a bet­ter place in which to rear and ed­u­cate the child, but it re­quired three weeks to over­come Mary’s ob­jec­tions.

• residences › Jerusalem home was Asmonean (Maccabean) palace

125:1.5Joseph saw how his son had sick­ened at the sight of the tem­ple rites and wisely led him around to view the “Gate Beau­ti­ful,” the artis­tic gate made of Corinthian bronze. But Je­sus had had enough for his first visit at the tem­ple. They re­turned to the up­per court for Mary and walked about in the open air and away from the crowds for an hour, view­ing the As­monean palace, the stately home of Herod, and the tower of the Ro­man guards. Dur­ing this stroll Joseph ex­plained to Je­sus that only the in­hab­i­tants of Je­ru­sa­lem were per­mit­ted to wit­ness the daily sac­ri­fices in the tem­ple, and that the dwellers in Gal­i­lee came up only three times a year to par­tic­i­pate in the tem­ple wor­ship: at the Pass­over, at the feast of Pen­te­cost (seven weeks af­ter Pass­over), and at the feast of taber­na­cles in Oc­to­ber. These feasts were es­tab­lished by Moses. They then dis­cussed the two later es­tab­lished feasts of the ded­i­ca­tion and of Purim. Af­ter­ward they went to their lodg­ings and made ready for the cel­e­bra­tion of the Pass­over.

• Joseph killed working on H.A.’s palace in Sepphoris; H.A. decreed no wages due

126:2.1All did go well un­til that fate­ful day of Tues­day, Septem­ber 25, when a run­ner from Sep­pho­ris brought to this Naz­a­reth home the tragic news that Joseph had been severely in­jured by the falling of a der­rick while at work on the gov­er­nor’s res­i­dence. The mes­sen­ger from Sep­pho­ris had stopped at the shop on the way to Joseph’s home, in­form­ing Je­sus of his fa­ther’s ac­ci­dent, and they went to­gether to the house to break the sad news to Mary. Je­sus de­sired to go im­me­di­ately to his fa­ther, but Mary would hear to noth­ing but that she must has­ten to her hus­band’s side. She di­rected that James, then ten years of age, should ac­com­pany her to Sep­pho­ris while Je­sus re­mained home with the younger chil­dren un­til she should re­turn, as she did not know how se­ri­ously Joseph had been in­jured. But Joseph died of his in­juries be­fore Mary ar­rived. They brought him to Naz­a­reth, and on the fol­low­ing day he was laid to rest with his fa­thers.

• Joseph killed working on H.A.’s palace in Sepphoris; H.A. decreed no wages due
• regarding Jesus › Jesus called “fox”

126:5.7The great shock of his fif­teenth year came when Je­sus went over to Sep­pho­ris to re­ceive the de­ci­sion of Herod re­gard­ing the ap­peal taken to him in the dis­pute about the amount of money due Joseph at the time of his ac­ci­den­tal death. Je­sus and Mary had hoped for the re­ceipt of a con­sid­er­able sum of money when the trea­surer at Sep­pho­ris had of­fered them a pal­try amount. Joseph’s broth­ers had taken an ap­peal to Herod him­self, and now Je­sus stood in the palace and heard Herod de­cree that his fa­ther had noth­ing due him at the time of his death. And for such an un­just de­ci­sion Je­sus never again trusted Herod An­tipas. It is not sur­pris­ing that he once al­luded to Herod as “that fox.”

• Joseph killed working on H.A.’s palace in Sepphoris; H.A. decreed no wages due

126:5.11At one time Je­sus faintly hoped that he might be able to gather up suf­fi­cient means, pro­vided they could col­lect the con­sid­er­able sum of money due his fa­ther for work on Herod’s palace, to war­rant un­der­tak­ing the pur­chase of a small farm. He had re­ally given se­ri­ous thought to this plan of mov­ing his fam­ily out into the coun­try. But when Herod re­fused to pay them any of the funds due Joseph, they gave up the am­bi­tion of own­ing a home in the coun­try. As it was, they con­trived to en­joy much of the ex­pe­ri­ence of farm life as they now had three cows, four sheep, a flock of chick­ens, a don­key, and a dog, in ad­di­tion to the doves. Even the lit­tle tots had their reg­u­lar du­ties to per­form in the well-reg­u­lated scheme of man­age­ment which char­ac­ter­ized the home life of this Naz­a­reth fam­ily.

• regarding Jesus › Jesus refused to speak to; would not work for

128:2.6The moral stan­dards of this home city of Herod An­tipas were so far be­low those of even the car­a­van city of Naz­a­reth that af­ter six months’ so­journ at Sep­pho­ris Je­sus was not averse to find­ing an ex­cuse for re­turn­ing to Naz­a­reth. The group he worked for were to be­come en­gaged on pub­lic work in both Sep­pho­ris and the new city of Tiberias, and Je­sus was dis­in­clined to have any­thing to do with any sort of em­ploy­ment un­der the super­vi­sion of Herod An­tipas. And there were still other rea­sons which made it wise, in the opin­ion of Je­sus, for him to go back to Naz­a­reth. When he re­turned to the re­pair shop, he did not again as­sume the per­sonal di­rec­tion of fam­ily af­fairs. He worked in as­so­ci­a­tion with James at the shop and as far as pos­si­ble per­mit­ted him to con­tinue over­sight of the home. James’s man­age­ment of fam­ily ex­pen­di­tures and his ad­min­is­tra­tion of the home bud­get were undis­turbed.

• residences › Jerusalem home was Asmonean (Maccabean) palace

128:3.5Per­haps the most no­table of all these con­tacts was the one with a young Hel­lenist named Stephen. This young man was on his first visit to Je­ru­sa­lem and chanced to meet Je­sus on Thurs­day af­ter­noon of Pass­over week. While they both strolled about view­ing the As­monean palace, Je­sus be­gan the ca­sual con­ver­sa­tion that re­sulted in their be­com­ing in­ter­ested in each other, and which led to a four-hour dis­cus­sion of the way of life and the true God and his wor­ship. Stephen was tremen­dously im­pressed with what Je­sus said; he never for­got his words.

• character › evil doings

135:3.4From all John heard of the vice and wicked­ness of Rome and the dis­so­lute­ness and moral bar­ren­ness of the em­pire, from what he knew of the evil do­ings of Herod An­tipas and the gov­er­nors of Judea, he was minded to be­lieve that the end of the age was im­pend­ing. It seemed to this rugged and no­ble child of na­ture that the world was ripe for the end of the age of man and the dawn of the new and di­vine age—the king­dom of heaven. The feel­ing grew in John’s heart that he was to be the last of the old proph­ets and the first of the new. And he fairly vi­brated with the mount­ing im­pulse to go forth and pro­claim to all men: “Re­pent! Get right with God! Get ready for the end; pre­pare your­selves for the ap­pear­ance of the new and eter­nal or­der of earth af­fairs, the king­dom of heaven.”

• regarding John the Baptist › imprisoned, beheaded John

135:10.2Near the vil­lage of Adam, John tar­ried for sev­eral weeks, and it was here that he made the mem­o­rable at­tack upon Herod An­tipas for un­law­fully tak­ing the wife of an­other man. By June of this year (A.D. 26) John was back at the Beth­any ford of the Jor­dan, where he had be­gun his preach­ing of the com­ing king­dom more than a year pre­vi­ously. In the weeks fol­low­ing the bap­tism of Je­sus the char­ac­ter of John’s preach­ing grad­u­ally changed into a procla­ma­tion of mercy for the com­mon peo­ple, while he de­nounced with re­newed ve­he­mence the cor­rupt po­lit­i­cal and re­li­gious rulers.

135:10.3Herod An­tipas, in whose ter­ri­tory John had been preach­ing, be­came alarmed lest he and his dis­ci­ples should start a re­bel­lion. Herod also re­sented John’s pub­lic crit­i­cisms of his do­mes­tic af­fairs. In view of all this, Herod de­cided to put John in prison. Ac­cord­ingly, very early in the morn­ing of June 12, be­fore the mul­ti­tude ar­rived to hear the preach­ing and wit­ness the bap­tiz­ing, the agents of Herod placed John un­der ar­rest. As weeks passed and he was not re­leased, his dis­ci­ples scat­tered over all Pales­tine, many of them go­ing into Gal­i­lee to join the fol­low­ers of Je­sus.

• residences › at Julias, Machaerus, Sepphoris, Tiberias

135:12.1As John was work­ing in south­ern Perea when ar­rested, he was taken im­me­di­ately to the prison of the fortress of Machaerus, where he was in­car­cer­ated un­til his ex­e­cu­tion. Herod ruled over Perea as well as Gal­i­lee, and he main­tained res­i­dence at this time at both Ju­lias and Machaerus in Perea. In Gal­i­lee the of­fi­cial res­i­dence had been moved from Sep­pho­ris to the new cap­i­tal at Tiberias.

135:12.2Herod feared to re­lease John lest he in­sti­gate re­bel­lion. He feared to put him to death lest the mul­ti­tude riot in the cap­i­tal, for thou­sands of Pere­ans be­lieved that John was a holy man, a prophet. There­fore Herod kept the Nazarite preacher in prison, not know­ing what else to do with him. Sev­eral times John had been be­fore Herod, but never would he agree ei­ther to leave the do­mains of Herod or to re­frain from all pub­lic ac­tiv­i­ties if he were re­leased. And this new ag­i­ta­tion con­cern­ing Je­sus of Naz­a­reth, which was steadily in­creas­ing, ad­mon­ished Herod that it was no time to turn John loose. Be­sides, John was also a vic­tim of the in­tense and bit­ter ha­tred of Hero­dias, Herod’s un­law­ful wife.

• regarding John the Baptist › talked with John about kingdom of heaven

135:12.3On nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions Herod talked with John about the king­dom of heaven, and while some­times se­ri­ously im­pressed with his mes­sage, he was afraid to re­lease him from prison.

• regarding John the Baptist › imprisoned, beheaded John

135:12.7Herod was filled with fear and sor­row, but be­cause of his oath and be­cause of all those who sat at meat with him, he would not deny the re­quest. And Herod An­tipas sent a sol­dier, com­mand­ing him to bring the head of John. So was John that night be­headed in the prison, the sol­dier bring­ing the head of the prophet on a plat­ter and pre­sent­ing it to the young woman at the rear of the ban­quet hall. And the damsel gave the plat­ter to her mother. When John’s dis­ci­ples heard of this, they came to the prison for the body of John, and af­ter lay­ing it in a tomb, they went and told Je­sus.

• regarding Jesus › sent observers for information on Jesus; to see if Jesus were John risen from dead

137:7.4Through­out this en­tire pe­riod Je­sus spoke in the syn­a­gogue but twice. By the end of these many weeks of wait­ing the re­ports about his bap­tism and the wine of Cana had be­gun to quiet down. And Je­sus saw to it that no more ap­par­ent mir­a­cles hap­pened dur­ing this time. But even though they lived so qui­etly at Beth­saida, re­ports of the strange do­ings of Je­sus had been car­ried to Herod An­tipas, who in turn sent spies to as­cer­tain what he was about. But Herod was more con­cerned about the preach­ing of John. He de­cided not to mo­lest Je­sus, whose work con­tin­ued along so qui­etly at Ca­per­naum.

• regarding Jesus › Jesus left Galilee to avoid

141:1.1Ca­per­naum was not far from Tiberias, and the fame of Je­sus had be­gun to spread well over all of Gal­i­lee and even to parts be­yond. Je­sus knew that Herod would soon be­gin to take no­tice of his work; so he thought best to jour­ney south and into Judea with his apos­tles. A com­pany of over one hun­dred be­liev­ers de­sired to go with them, but Je­sus spoke to them and be­sought them not to ac­com­pany the apos­tolic group on their way down the Jor­dan. Though they con­sented to re­main be­hind, many of them fol­lowed af­ter the Mas­ter within a few days.

• regarding John the Baptist › imprisoned, beheaded John

144:0.2There were a num­ber of rea­sons why Je­sus and his apos­tles were in re­tire­ment at this time on the bor­ders of Samaria and the De­capo­lis. The Je­ru­sa­lem re­li­gious rulers were very an­tag­o­nis­tic; Herod An­tipas still held John in prison, fear­ing ei­ther to re­lease or ex­e­cute him, while he con­tin­ued to en­ter­tain sus­pi­cions that John and Je­sus were in some way as­so­ci­ated. These con­di­tions made it un­wise to plan for ag­gres­sive work in ei­ther Judea or Gal­i­lee. There was a third rea­son: the slowly aug­ment­ing ten­sion be­tween the lead­ers of John’s dis­ci­ples and the apos­tles of Je­sus, which grew worse with the in­creas­ing num­ber of be­liev­ers.

• regarding John the Baptist › imprisoned, beheaded John

144:9.1John the Bap­tist was ex­e­cuted by or­der of Herod An­tipas on the evening of Jan­uary 10, A.D. 28. The next day a few of John’s dis­ci­ples who had gone to Machaerus heard of his ex­e­cu­tion and, go­ing to Herod, made re­quest for his body, which they put in a tomb, later giv­ing it burial at Se­baste, the home of Ab­ner. The fol­low­ing day, Jan­uary 12, they started north to the camp of John’s and Je­sus’ apos­tles near Pella, and they told Je­sus about the death of John. When Je­sus heard their re­port, he dis­missed the mul­ti­tude and, call­ing the twenty-four to­gether, said: “John is dead. Herod has be­headed him. Tonight go into joint coun­cil and ar­range your af­fairs ac­cord­ingly. There shall be de­lay no longer. The hour has come to pro­claim the king­dom openly and with power. To­mor­row we go into Gal­i­lee.”

• regarding Jesus › sent observers for information on Jesus; to see if Jesus were John risen from dead

145:3.12As might have been ex­pected, the fame of this sun­down heal­ing at Beth­saida in Ca­per­naum spread through­out all Gal­i­lee and Judea and to the re­gions be­yond. Once more were the fears of Herod aroused, and he sent watch­ers to re­port on the work and teach­ings of Je­sus and to as­cer­tain if he was the for­mer car­pen­ter of Naz­a­reth or John the Bap­tist risen from the dead.

• many of H.A.’s household believed in Jesus

147:0.2Many of the house­hold of Herod be­lieved in Je­sus and at­tended these meet­ings. It was the in­flu­ence of these be­liev­ers among Herod’s of­fi­cial fam­ily that had helped to lessen that ruler’s en­mity to­ward Je­sus. These be­liev­ers at Tiberias had fully ex­plained to Herod that the “king­dom” which Je­sus pro­claimed was spir­i­tual in na­ture and not a po­lit­i­cal ven­ture. Herod rather be­lieved these mem­bers of his own house­hold and there­fore did not per­mit him­self to be­come un­duly alarmed by the spread­ing abroad of the re­ports con­cern­ing Je­sus’ teach­ing and heal­ing. He had no ob­jec­tions to Je­sus’ work as a healer or re­li­gious teacher. Not­with­stand­ing the fa­vor­able at­ti­tude of many of Herod’s ad­vis­ers, and even of Herod him­self, there ex­isted a group of his sub­or­di­nates who were so in­flu­enced by the re­li­gious lead­ers at Je­ru­sa­lem that they re­mained bit­ter and threat­en­ing en­e­mies of Je­sus and the apos­tles and, later on, did much to ham­per their pub­lic ac­tiv­i­ties. The great­est dan­ger to Je­sus lay in the Je­ru­sa­lem re­li­gious lead­ers and not in Herod. And it was for this very rea­son that Je­sus and the apos­tles spent so much time and did most of their pub­lic preach­ing in Gal­i­lee rather than at Je­ru­sa­lem and in Judea.

• regarding Jesus › permitted Sanhedrin to seize Jesus on religious charges

148:7.3And as this man stretched forth his with­ered hand, it was made whole. The peo­ple were minded to turn upon the Phar­isees, but Je­sus bade them be calm, say­ing: “I have just told you that it is law­ful to do good on the Sab­bath, to save life, but I did not in­struct you to do harm and give way to the de­sire to kill.” The an­gered Phar­isees went away, and not­with­stand­ing it was the Sab­bath day, they has­tened forth­with to Tiberias and took coun­sel with Herod, do­ing ev­ery­thing in their power to arouse his prej­u­dice in or­der to se­cure the Hero­di­ans as al­lies against Je­sus. But Herod re­fused to take ac­tion against Je­sus, ad­vis­ing that they carry their com­plaints to Je­ru­sa­lem.

• James of Safed was minor official of H.A.; Chuza was steward

150:1.1Of all the dar­ing things which Je­sus did in con­nec­tion with his earth ca­reer, the most amaz­ing was his sud­den an­nounce­ment on the evening of Jan­uary 16: “On the mor­row we will set apart ten women for the min­is­ter­ing work of the king­dom.” At the be­gin­ning of the two weeks’ pe­riod dur­ing which the apos­tles and the evan­ge­lists were to be ab­sent from Beth­saida on their fur­lough, Je­sus re­quested David to sum­mon his par­ents back to their home and to dis­patch mes­sen­gers call­ing to Beth­saida ten de­vout women who had served in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the for­mer en­camp­ment and the tented in­fir­mary. These women had all lis­tened to the in­struc­tion given the young evan­ge­lists, but it had never oc­curred to ei­ther them­selves or their teach­ers that Je­sus would dare to com­mis­sion women to teach the gospel of the king­dom and min­is­ter to the sick. These ten women se­lected and com­mis­sioned by Je­sus were: Su­sanna, the daugh­ter of the for­mer chazan of the Naz­a­reth syn­a­gogue; Joanna, the wife of Chuza, the stew­ard of Herod An­tipas; Eliz­a­beth, the daugh­ter of a wealthy Jew of Tiberias and Sep­pho­ris; Martha, the el­der sis­ter of An­drew and Pe­ter; Rachel, the sis­ter-in-law of Jude, the Mas­ter’s brother in the flesh; Nas­anta, the daugh­ter of El­man, the Syr­ian physi­cian; Milcha, a cousin of the Apos­tle Thomas; Ruth, the el­dest daugh­ter of Mat­thew Levi; Celta, the daugh­ter of a Ro­man cen­tu­rion; and Aga­man, a widow of Da­mas­cus. Sub­se­quently, Je­sus added two other women to this group—Mary Mag­da­lene and Re­becca, the daugh­ter of Joseph of Ari­mathea.

• residences › at Julias, Machaerus, Sepphoris, Tiberias

150:3.1The Sab­bath ser­vices of the apos­tolic party had been put in the hands of the women by An­drew, upon in­struc­tions from Je­sus. This meant, of course, that they could not be held in the new syn­a­gogue. The women se­lected Joanna to have charge of this oc­ca­sion, and the meet­ing was held in the ban­quet room of Herod’s new palace, Herod be­ing away in res­i­dence at Ju­lias in Perea. Joanna read from the Scrip­tures con­cern­ing woman’s work in the re­li­gious life of Is­rael, mak­ing ref­er­ence to Miriam, Deb­o­rah, Es­ther, and oth­ers.

• Herod Antipas

152:6.5Je­sus thus en­deav­ored to pre­pare the apos­tles for the im­pend­ing shock—the cri­sis in the pub­lic at­ti­tude to­ward him which was only a few days dis­tant. He ex­plained to the twelve that the re­li­gious rulers of Je­ru­sa­lem would con­spire with Herod An­tipas to ef­fect their de­struc­tion. The twelve be­gan to re­al­ize more fully (though not fi­nally) that Je­sus was not go­ing to sit on David’s throne. They saw more fully that spir­i­tual truth was not to be ad­vanced by ma­te­rial won­ders. They be­gan to re­al­ize that the feed­ing of the five thou­sand and the pop­u­lar move­ment to make Je­sus king was the apex of the mir­a­cle-seek­ing, won­der-work­ing ex­pectance of the peo­ple and the height of Je­sus’ ac­claim by the pop­u­lace. They vaguely dis­cerned and dimly fore­saw the ap­proach­ing times of spir­i­tual sift­ing and cruel ad­ver­sity. These twelve men were slowly awak­ing to the re­al­iza­tion of the real na­ture of their task as am­bas­sadors of the king­dom, and they be­gan to gird them­selves for the try­ing and test­ing or­deals of the last year of the Mas­ter’s min­istry on earth.

• position › brother of Tetrarch Philip
• regarding Jesus › sent observers for information on Jesus; to see if Jesus were John risen from dead

153:1.1A dis­tin­guished con­gre­ga­tion greeted Je­sus at three o’clock on this ex­qui­site Sab­bath af­ter­noon in the new Ca­per­naum syn­a­gogue. Jairus pre­sided and handed Je­sus the Scrip­tures to read. The day be­fore, fifty-three Phar­isees and Sad­ducees had ar­rived from Je­ru­sa­lem; more than thirty of the lead­ers and rulers of the neigh­bor­ing syn­a­gogues were also pres­ent. These Jew­ish re­li­gious lead­ers were act­ing di­rectly un­der or­ders from the San­hedrin at Je­ru­sa­lem, and they con­sti­tuted the or­tho­dox van­guard which had come to in­au­gu­rate open war­fare on Je­sus and his dis­ci­ples. Sit­ting by the side of these Jew­ish lead­ers, in the syn­a­gogue seats of honor, were the of­fi­cial ob­servers of Herod An­tipas, who had been di­rected to as­cer­tain the truth con­cern­ing the dis­turb­ing re­ports that an at­tempt had been made by the pop­u­lace to pro­claim Je­sus the king of the Jews, over in the do­mains of his brother Philip.

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.

• character › apostate Jew; believed nothing, feared everything

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.

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.

• regarding Jesus › knew Sanhedrin would not give Jesus a fair trial

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.

• regarding Jesus › change of heart regarding Jesus

156:6.8Even Herod An­tipas ex­pe­ri­enced a change of heart and, on learn­ing that Je­sus was so­journ­ing across the lake in the ter­ri­tory of his brother Philip, sent word to him that, while he had signed war­rants for his ar­rest in Gal­i­lee, he had not so au­tho­rized his ap­pre­hen­sion in Perea, thus in­di­cat­ing that Je­sus would not be mo­lested if he re­mained out­side of Gal­i­lee; and he com­mu­ni­cated this same rul­ing to the Jews at Je­ru­sa­lem.

• James of Safed was minor official of H.A.; Chuza was steward

158:4.3For al­most two weeks this anx­ious fa­ther, a mi­nor of­fi­cial of Herod An­tipas, had wan­dered about through the west­ern bor­ders of Philip’s do­mains, seek­ing Je­sus that he might en­treat him to cure this af­flicted son. And he did not catch up with the apos­tolic party un­til about noon of this day when Je­sus was up on the moun­tain with the three apos­tles.

• regarding Jesus › decided to kill Jesus or drive him away

171:4.4It was here at Livias, just af­ter break­fast, that cer­tain friendly Phar­isees came to Je­sus and said: “Flee in haste from these parts, for Herod, just as he sought John, now seeks to kill you. He fears an up­ris­ing of the peo­ple and has de­cided to kill you. We bring you this warn­ing that you may es­cape.”

• regarding Jesus › resurrection of Lazarus alarmed

171:4.5And this was partly true. The res­ur­rec­tion of Laz­a­rus fright­ened and alarmed Herod, and know­ing that the San­hedrin had dared to con­demn Je­sus, even in ad­vance of a trial, Herod made up his mind ei­ther to kill Je­sus or to drive him out of his do­mains. He re­ally de­sired to do the lat­ter since he so feared him that he hoped he would not be com­pelled to ex­e­cute him.

• regarding Jesus › Jesus called “fox”

171:4.6When Je­sus heard what the Phar­isees had to say, he replied: “I well know about Herod and his fear of this gospel of the king­dom. But, mis­take not, he would much pre­fer that the Son of Man go up to Je­ru­sa­lem to suf­fer and die at the hands of the chief priests; he is not anx­ious, hav­ing stained his hands with the blood of John, to be­come re­spon­si­ble for the death of the Son of Man. Go you and tell that fox that the Son of Man preaches in Perea to­day, to­mor­row goes into Judea, and af­ter a few days, will be per­fected in his mis­sion on earth and pre­pared to as­cend to the Fa­ther.”

• Herod Antipas

174:2.4The pre­vi­ous day the rulers had sought to trip him be­fore the mul­ti­tude on mat­ters of ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal au­thor­ity, and hav­ing failed, they now sought to in­volve him in a dam­ag­ing dis­cus­sion of civil au­thor­ity. Both Pi­late and Herod were in Je­ru­sa­lem at this time, and Je­sus’ en­e­mies con­jec­tured that, if he would dare to ad­vise against the pay­ment of trib­ute to Cae­sar, they could go at once be­fore the Ro­man au­thor­i­ties and charge him with sedi­tion. On the other hand, if he should ad­vise the pay­ment of trib­ute in so many words, they rightly cal­cu­lated that such a pro­nounce­ment would greatly wound the na­tional pride of his Jew­ish hear­ers, thereby alien­at­ing the good will and af­fec­tion of the mul­ti­tude.

• regarding John the Baptist › imprisoned, beheaded John

175:1.4“My Fa­ther has long dealt in mercy with this peo­ple. Gen­er­a­tion af­ter gen­er­a­tion have we sent our proph­ets to teach and warn them, and gen­er­a­tion af­ter gen­er­a­tion have they killed these heaven-sent teach­ers. And now do your will­ful high priests and stub­born rulers go right on do­ing this same thing. As Herod brought about the death of John, you like­wise now make ready to de­stroy the Son of Man.

• animosity with Pilate

185:3.8Pi­late was hard pressed to know what to do with Je­sus; there­fore, when he heard them say that he be­gan his work in Gal­i­lee, he thought to avoid the re­spon­si­bil­ity of de­cid­ing the case, at least to gain time for thought, by send­ing Je­sus to ap­pear be­fore Herod, who was then in the city at­tend­ing the Pass­over. Pi­late also thought that this ges­ture would help to an­ti­dote some of the bit­ter feel­ing which had ex­isted for some time be­tween him­self and Herod, due to nu­mer­ous mis­un­der­stand­ings over mat­ters of ju­ris­dic­tion.

• Joseph killed working on H.A.’s palace in Sepphoris; H.A. decreed no wages due
• position › tetrarch; wicked Idumean
• rebuilt Sepphoris and cities of Galilee
• residences › Jerusalem home was Asmonean (Maccabean) palace

185:4.1When Herod An­tipas stopped in Je­ru­sa­lem, he dwelt in the old Mac­cabean palace of Herod the Great, and it was to this home of the for­mer king that Je­sus was now taken by the tem­ple guards, and he was fol­lowed by his ac­cusers and an in­creas­ing mul­ti­tude. Herod had long heard of Je­sus, and he was very cu­ri­ous about him. When the Son of Man stood be­fore him, on this Fri­day morn­ing, the wicked Idumean never for one mo­ment re­called the lad of for­mer years who had ap­peared be­fore him in Sep­pho­ris plead­ing for a just de­ci­sion re­gard­ing the money due his fa­ther, who had been ac­ci­den­tally killed while at work on one of the pub­lic build­ings. As far as Herod knew, he had never seen Je­sus, al­though he had wor­ried a great deal about him when his work had been cen­tered in Gal­i­lee. Now that he was in cus­tody of Pi­late and the Judeans, Herod was de­sirous of see­ing him, feel­ing se­cure against any trou­ble from him in the fu­ture. Herod had heard much about the mir­a­cles wrought by Je­sus, and he re­ally hoped to see him do some won­der.

• regarding Jesus › dared Jesus perform a miracle

185:4.2When they brought Je­sus be­fore Herod, the tetrarch was star­tled by his stately ap­pear­ance and the calm com­po­sure of his coun­te­nance. For some fif­teen min­utes Herod asked Je­sus ques­tions, but the Mas­ter would not an­swer. Herod taunted and dared him to per­form a mir­a­cle, but Je­sus would not re­ply to his many in­quiries or re­spond to his taunts.

• regarding Jesus › arrayed Jesus in old royal robe
• regarding John the Baptist › cursed with fear from killing John

185:4.3Then Herod turned to the chief priests and the Sad­ducees and, giv­ing ear to their ac­cu­sa­tions, heard all and more than Pi­late had lis­tened to re­gard­ing the al­leged evil do­ings of the Son of Man. Fi­nally, be­ing con­vinced that Je­sus would nei­ther talk nor per­form a won­der for him, Herod, af­ter mak­ing fun of him for a time, ar­rayed him in an old pur­ple royal robe and sent him back to Pi­late. Herod knew he had no ju­ris­dic­tion over Je­sus in Judea. Though he was glad to be­lieve that he was fi­nally to be rid of Je­sus in Gal­i­lee, he was thank­ful that it was Pi­late who had the re­spon­si­bil­ity of putting him to death. Herod never had fully re­cov­ered from the fear that cursed him as a re­sult of killing John the Bap­tist. Herod had at cer­tain times even feared that Je­sus was John risen from the dead. Now he was re­lieved of that fear since he ob­served that Je­sus was a very dif­fer­ent sort of per­son from the out­spo­ken and fiery prophet who dared to ex­pose and de­nounce his pri­vate life.

• regarding Jesus › Jesus refused to speak to; would not work for

186:2.2Be­fore the San­hedrist court Je­sus de­clined to make replies to the tes­ti­mony of per­jured wit­nesses. There was but one ques­tion which would al­ways elicit an an­swer, whether asked by friend or foe, and that was the one con­cern­ing the na­ture and di­vin­ity of his mis­sion on earth. When asked if he were the Son of God, he un­fail­ingly made re­ply. He stead­fastly re­fused to speak when in the pres­ence of the cu­ri­ous and wicked Herod. Be­fore Pi­late he spoke only when he thought that Pi­late or some other sin­cere per­son might be helped to a bet­ter knowl­edge of the truth by what he said. Je­sus had taught his apos­tles the use­less­ness of cast­ing their pearls be­fore swine, and he now dared to prac­tice what he had taught. His con­duct at this time ex­em­pli­fied the pa­tient sub­mis­sion of the hu­man na­ture cou­pled with the ma­jes­tic si­lence and solemn dig­nity of the di­vine na­ture. He was al­to­gether will­ing to dis­cuss with Pi­late any ques­tion re­lated to the po­lit­i­cal charges brought against him—any ques­tion which he rec­og­nized as be­long­ing to the gov­er­nor’s ju­ris­dic­tion.

• regarding Jesus › arrayed Jesus in old royal robe

186:4.1Af­ter Pi­late had washed his hands be­fore the mul­ti­tude, thus seek­ing to es­cape the guilt of de­liv­er­ing up an in­no­cent man to be cru­ci­fied just be­cause he feared to re­sist the clamor of the rulers of the Jews, he or­dered the Mas­ter turned over to the Ro­man sol­diers and gave the word to their cap­tain that he was to be cru­ci­fied im­me­di­ately. Upon tak­ing charge of Je­sus, the sol­diers led him back into the court­yard of the prae­to­rium, and af­ter re­mov­ing the robe which Herod had put on him, they dressed him in his own gar­ments. These sol­diers mocked and de­rided him, but they did not in­flict fur­ther phys­i­cal pun­ish­ment. Je­sus was now alone with these Ro­man sol­diers. His friends were in hid­ing; his en­e­mies had gone their way; even John Zeb­e­dee was no longer by his side.