SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/2/2022 8:06 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “Herod’s Reason”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matt. 14:3-11
Message of the verses: “3 For when Herod
had John arrested, he bound him, and put him in prison on account of Herodias,
the wife of his brother Philip. 4 For John had been saying to him, "It is
not lawful for you to have her." 5 And although he wanted to put him to
death, he feared the multitude, because they regarded him as a prophet. 6 But
when Herod’s birthday came, the daughter of Herodias danced before them
and pleased Herod. 7 Thereupon he promised with an oath to give her whatever
she asked. 8 And having been prompted by her mother, she said, "Give me
here on a platter the head of John the Baptist." 9 And although he was
grieved, the king commanded it to be given because of his oaths, and
because of his dinner guests. 10 And he sent and had John beheaded in the
prison. 11 And his head was brought on a platter and given to the girl; and she
brought it to her mother.”
In our last SD we spoke about the goodness of John
the Baptist. Now in extreme contrast,
Herod Antipas was evil, along with being debauched, shameless, henpecked,
lustful, and given to every kind of sinful excess. Herod did have more of a conscience than his degrading
father, but he did not have the courage to follow it. As we compare Herod with John the Baptist it
could be said that to the extent John was admired and honored, Herod was
despised and feared.
We
read the following in verse five “And although he wanted to put him to death,
he feared the multitude, because they regarded him as a prophet.” John was probably put into a dungeon at the
palace that Herod lived at. MacArthur
writes “The palace was located on a mountain higher even than the city of
Jerusalem and offered a beautiful and dramatic view. But the dungeon was dug deep into the earth
beneath, and archaeologists have discovered the many places where prisoners
were chained to the walls. There was no
natural light and only dank, foul air to breathe. Here John the Baptist was incarcerated for about
a year until his execution.”
We
see in verse tree the reason that Herod had John arrested “For when Herod had
John arrested, he bound him, and put him in prison on account of Herodias, the wife of his brother
Philip.” Herod had taken Herodias
as his own wife after seducing her away from his half brother Philip while on a
visit to Rome. MacArthur adds “In order
to marry her, he had to divorce his present wife, the daughter of king Aretas,
with whom the marriage of his daughter had sealed a political and military
alliance. Aretas ruled Nabatean Arabia,
whose capital was the famed fortress city of Petra, located about fifty miles
southeast of the Dead Sea. Aretas was so
angered by the treatment of his daughter that he destroyed most of Herod’s army
and would have slain the tetrarch as well, had not the Roman army intervened.”
He
thing goes on to talk about Herodias:
Herodias is one of the most wicked and perverse women mentioned
Scripture, perhaps second only to Jezebel.
Although she was at first beguiled by Herod, it was not long until he
was being manipulated by her. Because
both Herod and Herodias were already married, their marriage to each other was
doubly not lawful. The Holy Spirit
refused to recognize her as Herod’s wife and directed Matthew to refer to her
as the wife of his brother Philip, although she had been divorced from Philip
for a number of years. The new marriage
not only was unlawful but incestuous, because Herodias was the daughter of
Aristobulus, another half brother of Herod, making her Herod’s niece.” I want to talk about the word incest for a
moment as this is a relatively new word and was not used during this time
period.
The
Bible does not tell when it was that John the Baptist confronted Herod about
his marriage, but it says that this is what happened and so we really don’t
have to speculate as to when it did happen.
We will continue, Lord willing to write more thoughts from these verses
we are looking at in our next SD.
6/2/2022 8:35 AM
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