Saturday in the 17th Week of Ordinary Time, August 3, 2024

Matthew 14, 1-12

Herod the tetrarch heard of the reputation of Jesus and said to his servants, “This man is John the Baptist. He has been raised from the dead; that is why mighty powers are at work in him.”  Now Herod had arrested John, bound him, and put him in prison on account of Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip, for John had said to him, “It is not lawful for you to have her.” Although he wanted to kill him, he feared the people, for they regarded him as a prophet. But at a birthday celebration for Herod, the daughter of Herodias performed a dance before the guests and delighted Herod so much that he swore to give her whatever she might ask for. Prompted by her mother, she said, “Give me here on a platter the head of John the Baptist.” The king was distressed, but because of his oaths and the guests who were present, he ordered that it be given, and he had John beheaded in the prison. His head was brought in on a platter and given to the girl, who took it to her mother. His disciples came and took away the corpse and buried him; and they went and told Jesus.

Following the death of Herod the Great, Caesar Augustus divided the Jewish puppet kingdom Herod had ruled into four pieces, each to be ruled by Herod’s sister and his three sons.  The territories of Galilee and Perea, which lay on the eastern side of the Jordan River, went to Herod Antipas. (It was this division of Israel that resulted in Herod Archelaus ruling Judea, causing St. Joseph to decide to take Mary and Jesus back to Nazareth in Galilee after the sojourn in Egypt rather than returning to Bethlehem).  Most of what is known of Herod Antipas comes to us through 1st century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, who paints him as insecure, impulsive, and unwise.  His one great accomplishment was the building of the city Tiberius, which he made his capital.  Although nominally a Jew, he did not practice its tenets and openly broke its Law when it suited him.  He did this in marrying his sister-in-law, Herodias, after she divorced her husband Philip.  The marriage outraged his Jewish subjects and alienated the Arabian king whose daughter Herod divorced in order to marry Herodias.  A disastrous war with the Arabian king followed shortly afterwards.

Among the subjects outraged by this breach of the Jewish Law was St. John the Baptist, who spoke out loudly against Herod for doing this.  Herod let him be for a time because of John’s popularity and because of the threat of war with the Arabs, but Herodias felt her place (and maybe her life) threatened by the Judean holy man, and it was due to her pressure on Herod that John was arrested.  John was kept in prison for about two years, a quite remarkable fact for a commoner who opposed a ruler in those days.  But a few months before the second Passover since his arrest, Herodias managed to get him killed in the manner described in today’s Gospel Reading.  Thus, John had been dead only a short time when Herodias, hearing the accounts of the miracles performed by the Lord Jesus, began to wonder if John had risen from the dead and had taken a new name.  Later, as St. Luke tells us, when Pilate sent Jesus to him, “Herod seeing Jesus, was very glad: for he was desirous of a long time to see him, because he had heard many things of him; and he hoped to see some sign wrought by him” (Luke 23, 8).  The Lord did not oblige him, nor did he answer any of his questions.  Indeed, Jesus, on an earlier occasion, had called him“that fox” (Luke 13, 32) for his unlawful marriage, general immorality, and the killing of John.

Herod and his wife came to a bad end, for all their cunning and stratagems.  His own nephew, Herod Agrippa, whom the Roman emperor Caligula had placed as king in Jerusalem in the year 37, accused him of plotting against him, and Caligula duly exiled him and his wife to central Gaul (modern France).  There they died in misery and poverty in 39.  

“His disciples came and took away the corpse and buried him; and they went and told Jesus.”  As an executed criminal, the body of John the Baptist would have been thrown outside the fortress of Machaerus (in the present day Kingdom of Jordan), where he had been imprisoned and killed, without burial.  Word of the execution would have leaked out to those of his disciples who had maintained vigil for two years, and it was these who buried him and came to Jesus, perhaps thinking him to be John’s successor.

Herod Antipas knew himself to be in a precarious position throughout his life.  He had survived the rampant insecurities and outright cruelty of his father, Herod the Great, who had killed even his own sister as well as innocent babies in his desperation.  He also made his own grievous and preventable miscalculations.  We Christians know ourselves to be living in a passing world, and we know very well that we are capable of acting out of weakness.  But we do not trust in emperors and alliances and might of strength, but in a Carpenter who died on a Cross.  We trust in the Son of God, the true King of all the universe.