XIV.
(1) Herod the tetrarch. — The son of Herod the Great by Malthace. Under his father’s will he succeeded to the government of Galilee and Peræa, with the title of Tetrarch, and as ruler of a fourth part of the Roman province of Syria. His first wife was a daughter of Aretas, an Arabian king or chief, named in 2 Corinthians 11:32 as king of the Damascenes. Herodias, the wife of his half-brother Philip (not the Tetrarch of Trachonitis, Luke 3:1, but son of Herod the Great by Mariamne, and though wealthy, holding no official position as a ruler), was daughter of Aristobulus, the son whom Herod put to death, and was therefore niece to both her husbands. Prompted partly by passion, partly by ambition, she left Philip, and became the wife of Antipas (Jos. Ant. xviii. 5, §4). The marriage, at once adulterous and by the Mosaic law doubly incestuous, shocked the conscience of all the stricter Jews. It involved Antipas in a war with the father of the wife whom he had divorced and dismissed, and it was probably in connection with this war that we read of soldiers on actual duty as coming under the teaching of the Baptist in Luke 3:14. The prophetic spirit of the Baptist, the very spirit of Elijah in his dealings with Ahab and Jezebel, made him the spokesman of the general feeling, and so brought him within the range of the vindictive bitterness of the guilty queen.
Heard of the fame of Jesus. — The words do not necessarily imply that no tidings had reached him till now. Our Lord’s ministry, however, had been at this time at the furthest not longer than a year, and possibly less, and Antipas, residing at Tiberias and surrounded by courtiers, might well be slow to hear of the works and teaching of the Prophet of Nazareth. Possibly, the nobleman of Capernaum (John 4:46), or Manaen the foster-brother of the tetrarch (Acts 13:1), or Chuza his steward (Luke 8:3), may have been among his first informants, as “the servants” (the word is not that used for “slaves”) to whom he now communicated his theory as to the reported wonders.