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Updated: June 13, 2025
Jesus owed his conquests to the infinite charm of his personality and speech. Everyone thought that he lived in a sphere higher than that of humanity. The aristocracy of the group was represented by a customs-officer, and by the wife of one of Herod's stewards. The rest were fishermen and common folk.
Herod's massacre had, after all, a certain mercy in it: there were no lingering tortures. The slayers of children went about with naked and bloody swords, which mothers could see, and might at least make effort to flee from. Into Rachel's refusal to be comforted there need enter no bitter agonies of remorse. But Herod's death, it seems, did not make Judea a safe place for babies.
Agrippa had by Cypros two sons and three daughters, which daughters were named Bernice, Mariarune, and Drusius; but the names of the sons were Agrippa and Drusus, of which Drusus died before he came to the years of puberty; but their father, Agrippa, was brought up with his other brethren, Herod and Aristobulus, for these were also the sons of the son of Herod the Great by Bernice; but Bernice was the daughter of Costobarus and of Salome, who was Herod's sister.
I think it wholly likely, too, that this vision of glory was in James' face, and steadied his steps, as so early in the history he met Herod's swordsman. It was a vision of Jesus that turned the tide. There's nothing to be compared with that. A man's life and service depend wholly on the vision of Jesus that has come, that is coming.
If Herod was a Sadducee, Herod's Sadduceeism, like frost upon the window-panes, was such a thin layer shutting out the invisible world, that the least warmth of conscience melted it, and the clear daylight glared in upon him. And I am afraid that there are a great many of us who may be half-inclined to reject the belief in another life, who would find precisely the same thing happening to us.
And indeed Herod's troubles in his family seemed to be augmented by reason of this attempt he made upon David's sepulcher; whether Divine vengeance increased the calamities he lay under, in order to render them incurable, or whether fortune made an assault upon him, in those cases wherein the seasonableness of the cause made it strongly believed that the calamities came upon him for his impiety; for the tumult was like a civil war in his palace, and their hatred towards one another was like that where each one strove to exceed another in calumnies.
Let us tie our horses among Herod's pillars, and spread the rugs for our noontide rest by the ruined south gate of the city. At our feet lies the wide, level, green valley where the mighty host of Ben-hadad, King of Damascus, once besieged the starving city and waited for its surrender.
And thus does the calumny of the captives, which hath been so odiously represented, appear to be no better than a fiction and a lie, made on purpose to provoke thy indignation; for I venture to affirm that when the forces of the Arabians came upon us, and one or two of Herod's party fell, he then only defended himself, and there fell Nacebus their general, and in all about twenty-five others, and no more; whence Sylleus, by multiplying every single soldier to a hundred, he reckons the slain to have been two thousand five hundred."
There went out also with him Salome, Herod's sister who took with her, her children, and many of her kindred were with her; which kindred of hers went, as they pretended, to assist Archelaus in gaining the kingdom, but in reality to oppose him, and chiefly to make loud complaints of what he had done in the temple.
Soon the last straggler would be lost to view, the heavy portcullis fall, and the massive iron gate swing to, and the first step would be taken towards the tragedy, which lay right before Herod's path. One sometimes wonders whether the whole of these circumstances had not been planned by the cunning device of Herodias.
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