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Herod the Great

We have all heard the Christmas story of the slaughter of the innocents ordered by Herod the
Great when Jesus was just two-years-old. But who exactly was Herod and why would he do
such a thing? According the historical record, the answer is power!

Herod was born about 72 BC at Idumea which is south and east of Judea of parents of Arab
descent. In fact, for those who have been there, Herod’s mother may well have been from Petra.
Under his father’s patronage, Herod first came to power when he was 25 years-old. He became
governor of Galilee. He came to prominence when he brutally destroyed bandits in the region.

Herod came to the favorable attention of Rome and in 39 BCE he was appointed King of Judea
by the Roman Senate. In the subsequent fight for his throne, Herod married Mariamne, the
granddaughter of Hyrcanus, the high priest. However, Herod was already married to Doris and
had a son. He banished both of them. In 36 BCE Herod considered his brother-in-law
Aristobulus as a threat to his throne and ordered him drowned at a party he sponsored. In 29
BCE Herod became jealous of his wife Mariamne and ordered her executed. Immediately
following that, he executed Mariamne’s mother Alexandra as a threat to his throne. As the years
passed, Herod executed another brother-in-law and three sons, Alexander, Aristobulus, and
Antipater. And all of this says nothing of his cruelty to his own people. As one scholar wrote,
“The terrible acts of bloodshed which Herod perpetrated in his own family were accompanied by
others among his subjects equally terrible, from the number who fell victims to them.”

Near the end, Herod became grievously ill with a mysterious affliction known today as Herod’s
Evil. It was under the grip of thatr fatal illness that Herod ordered the babes to be slain. Canon
Frederic Farrar who wrote “The Life of Christ” said:

“It must have been very shortly after the murder of the innocents that Herod died. Only
five days before his death he had made a frantic attempt at suicide and had ordered the
execution of his eldest son Antipater. His death-bed, which once more reminds us of
Henry VIII, was accompanied by circumstances of peculiar horror; and it has been
asserted that he died of a loathsome disease, which is hardly mentioned in history, except
in the case of men who have been rendered infamous by an atrocity of persecuting zeal.
On his bed of intolerable anguish, in that splendid and luxurious palace which he had
built for himself, under the palms of Jericho, swollen with disease and scorched by thirst,
ulcerated externally and glowing inwardly with a, soft slow fire,’ surrounded by plotting
sons and plundering slaves, detesting all and detested by all, longing for death as a
release from his tortures yet dreading it as the beginning of worse terrors, stung by
remorse yet still unslaked with murder, a horror to all around him yet in his guilty
conscience a worse terror to himself, devoured by the premature corruption of an
anticipated grave, eaten of worms as though visibly smitten by the finger of God’s wrath
after seventy years of successful villainy, the wretched old man, whom men had called
the Great, lay in savage frenzy awaiting his last hour. As he knew that none would shed
one tear for him, he determined that they should shed many for themselves, and issued an
order that, under pain of death, the principal families of the kingdom and the chiefs of the
tribes should come to Jericho. They came, and then, shutting them in the hippodrome, he
secretly commanded his sister Salome that at the moment of his death they should all be massacred. And so, choking as it were with blood, devising massacres in its very
delirium, the soul of Herod passed forth into the night.”

Power is an addicting drug for which some have sold their souls in infamy to hold. That is the
story of Herod the Great.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herod_the_Great
Smith Comprehensive Dictionary of the Bible, cited in Talmage, Jesus the Christ, p. 101
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/jesus-the-christ/chapter-8?lang=eng