Acts 12:21-23 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

And upon a set day When shows and games were exhibited by him in honour of Claudius Cesar; Herod, arrayed in royal apparel In a garment so wrought with silver, that the rays of the rising sun, striking upon, and reflected from it, dazzled the eyes of the beholders; sat upon his throne In a public theatre; and made an oration unto them Not to the Tyrian and Sidonian deputies merely, but unto all the people assembled on this grand occasion. And the people gave a shout, It is the voice of a god, and not of a man Such profane flattery the heathen frequently paid to princes. But the commonness of a wicked custom rather increases than lessens the guilt of it. And the unhappy king, instead of expressing a just indignation at such base and impious adulation, hearkened to it with a secret pleasure. And immediately For frequently God does not delay to vindicate his injured honour; an angel of the Lord smote him Of this, other historians say nothing; so wide a difference there is between divine and human history! An angel of the Lord brought out Peter, an angel smote Herod. Men did not see the instruments in either case: these were only known to the people of God. Because he gave not God the glory Did not reject these blasphemous applauses, but willingly received them, and thus filled up the measure of his iniquities. So then vengeance tarried not. And he was eaten of worms Or vermin, which bred in his bowels, and rendered him a most loathsome and horrible spectacle to all about him; and he gave up the ghost Expired in agony and infamy, (as his grandfather, Herod the Great, had done, see on Matthew 2:19,) and sunk as much below the common state of human nature, as his flatterers endeavoured to raise him above it! The Jewish historian, Josephus, confirms St. Luke's account of the end of this miserable man. He tells us, that “as he did not rebuke the impious flattery addressed to him, he was immediately seized with exquisite and racking tortures in his bowels, so that he was compelled, before he left the place, to own his folly in admitting such acclamations, and upbraided those about him with the wretched condition in which they then saw their god; and being carried out of the assembly to his palace, he expired in violent agonies, the fifth day after he was taken, in the fifty-fourth year of his age, and the seventh of his reign.” Antiq., Acts 19:7.