Acts 25:13 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

And after certain days, &c. We have here the preparation that was made for another hearing of Paul before King Agrippa, not in order to his giving judgment upon him, but in order to his giving advice concerning him, or rather, only to gratify his curiosity. Christ had said concerning his disciples, and particularly concerning his apostles, that they should be brought before governors and kings, and here we find his prediction accomplished. The preceding verses inform us of Paul's being brought before Festus the governor, and the following of his being brought before Agrippa the king, for a testimony to both. King Agrippa and Bernice His sister, with whom he lived in a scandalous familiarity; came to Cesarea to salute Festus To congratulate him on his arrival in the province. The prince, here mentioned, was the son of Herod Agrippa, mentioned Acts 12:1, (where see the note,) and grandson of Aristobulus, the son of Herod the Great. As he was but seventeen years of age when his father died, the Emperor Claudius did not think proper to appoint him king of Judea in the room of his father, but made it a Roman province; however, on the death of his uncle, Herod Antipas, (of whom see note on Matthew 14:1,) he made him king of Chalcis, which, after he had governed it four years, he exchanged for a greater kingdom, and gave him the tetrarchies of Philip and Lysanias, to which Nero afterward added part of Galilee, with several towns in Peræa. Of Bernice's incestuous commerce with this Agrippa, Juvenal speaks, Sat. 6. ver. 155, as well as Josephus, Antiq., lib. 20. cap. 7. It is certain this lady had first been married to her own uncle, Herod, king of Chalcis; after whose death, on the report of her scandalous familiarity with her brother Agrippa, she married Polemon, king of Cilicia, whom she soon forsook, though he had submitted to circumcision to obtain the alliance. This was also the person whom Titus Vespasian so passionately loved, and whom he would have made empress, had not the clamours of the Roman people prevented it.