Herodias

 

Extraordinary Women of The Bible

Women of Christ's Time

"Herodias"

 

Herodias: "The Woman Responsible for the Murder of a Preacher."

 

Key Scripture: Matthew 14:3-12, Mark 6:14-24, Luke 3:19-20. 

 

Her Name Means: "Heroic" (the female form of "Herod")

 

Her Character: Herodias was a proud woman who longed to be queen, she used her daughter to manipulate her husband into doing her will. She acted arrogantly, from the beginning to the end, in complete disregard to the laws of the land.

Her Shame: To be rebuked by an upstart prophet (John the Baptist) for leaving her husband Philip II  in order to marry his half-brother Herod Antipas.

Her Triumph: That her scheme to murder her enemy, John the Baptist, worked.

 

Pre-Story: A wicked granddaughter of Herod the Great who had ruled Judea for thirty-four years. This little girl’s life began in darkness. Before she was born, her grandfather King Herod the Great killed her grandmother, the lovely, tragic Mariamne, in a fit of jealous rage. Or that was the story. Then he killed Herodias’ father, his own son. Her mother fled to Rome with Herodias and her younger brother Agrippa, and stayed there until it was safe to return. When King Herod was safely dead. Little Herodias grew up as a royal aristocrat in Rome, pampered and spoiled. She lived from about the year 15 BC to about 39 AD.

 

Her Story: Her first husband, and the father of her daughter Salome, was her uncle Philip II, also a son of Herod the Great. Philip was a good husband but rather dull man, and she soon divorced him and married Philip’s half brother Herod Antipas (who was also her uncle). Herodias’s husband and his half brother, Antipas, had been lucky survivors of Herod the Great’s bloody family, but Antipas had proved the luckier of the two. For while Philip and Herodias languished in Rome with no one to rule, Antipas had been appointed tetrarch of Galilee and Perea. She could feel the man’s power when he first visited them in Rome. And power was her favorite aphrodisiac.

But neither Antipas nor Herodias had expected their transgression to become a matter of public agitation. After all, who was there to agitate, except the usual ragtag band of upstarts? A real prophet had not troubled Israel for more than four hundred years. But trouble was edging toward them in the form of a new Elijah, whom God had been nurturing with locust and honey in the wilderness that bordered their realm. This prophet, John the Baptist, cared nothing for diplomacy. He could not be bought or bullied, and was preaching a message of repentance to all who would listen.

 

Soon, John the Baptist began to criticize her for marrying her former husband’s brother. In response, Antipas put him in prison. Whose idea was it to kill John the Baptist? Hard to say. Mark in his gospel says it was Herodias who wanted to see John killed. Matthew blamed Herod and said that from the start he plotted to be rid of John. In all probability, it was a bit of both. Royal or not, Herodias’ family was rat cunning, and John’s preaching's were de-stabilizing a politically sensitive country. If a revolt broke out, Antipas and Herodias would be the losers, and they were well aware of the fact.

 

Herodias would have liked for Antipas to kill John, yet even he had to step carefully, lest he ignite an uprising among John’s ever-growing number of followers. Herod had John imprisoned, but he was afraid to execute the popular prophet. Herod feared John himself, "knowing that he was a just and holy man" (Mark 6:20). Herodias however was incensed that John had publicly condemned her, and she "held it against him and wanted to kill him" (Mark 16:19). 

 

Her chance came on Herod Antipas’s birthday, a feast was held in his honor and attended by a "who’s who" list of dignitaries. During the evening, Herodias' young daughter, Salome, performed a dance for Herod Antipas and his guests which so pleased him that he promised his stepdaughter anything she desired, up to half his kingdom. When she looked to her mother for advice, Herodias told her to ask for John the Baptist’s head. Though Herod Antipas was distressed by her request, he was even more distressed at the prospect of breaking an oath he had so publicly made. Therefore, in complete disregard for Jewish law, which prohibited both execution without trial and decapitation as a form of execution, he immediately ordered John’s death. 

 

That night, Herodias must have savored her triumph over the man whom Jesus referred to as the greatest who had yet lived. John had been sent as the last of the prophets, a new Elijah, whose preaching was to prepare the way for Jesus. Had Herodias heeded John’s call to repentance, her heart might have welcomed the gospel. Rather than being remembered as just one more member of a bloody dynasty, she could have become a true child of God. Instead of casting her lot with the great women of the Bible, however, she chose to model herself on one of the worst—Jezebel, her spiritual mother. By so doing, she sealed her heart against the truth and all the transforming possibilities of grace. 

 

Lesson We Can Learn from Her Legacy: As negative as it sounds, the lesson or promise learned from Herodias can only be that sin will devour us. If sin always has its way in our lives, it will eventually consume us. There is only one way out: If we abandon our sin and repent, we will find forgiveness and a new life in Christ. He promises to forgive even the most horrific sins, the most depraved lifestyles, the most abandoned behaviors. We may still face the consequences of our sin, but we will no longer have to fear its judgment. 

 

Genealogy:
Born: 15 BC
Died: 39 AD
Father - Aristobulus, son of Herod the Great.
Mother - Mariamne, daughter of Hyrcanus
Husbands - Philip I, Herod Antipas.
Children - Daughter, Salome