CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Mark 6:19. Had a quarrel.—Fostered a grudge. Her inward enmity only waited for an opportunity to break forth in open hostilities.
Mark 6:20. Observed.—Or preserved, i.e. guarded him. Did many things.—א, B, L, and Coptic read, he was much perplexed, which, however, hardly seems to harmonise with the next words,and heard Him gladly.
Mark 6:21.—Mark alone mentions the three classes of guests:
(1) Herod’s political magnates;
(2) the military dignitaries—“chiliarchs,” i.e. commanders of a thousand men;
(3) the grandees of Galilee—persons of substance and distinction.
Mark 6:22.—The reading best supported by MS. authority (א, B, D, L, Δ) is that of R.V. margin—“his daughter Herodias, thus making mother and daughter bear the same name. It would not be a conclusive argument against this that this child of shame is not otherwise mentioned in history. The circumstances of her birth would condemn her to obscurity, and she may have died young. Against the common reading it may be urged that in A. D. 29 Salome, who was left a widow in A. D. 34, might perhaps barely (but not more than barely) be described as κοράσιον; while the other reading would throw back the beginning of Herod’s connexion with Herodias to the year 20 or 21. This would then have to be reconciled with the history of his relations to the daughter of Aretas. Josephus says that at the time when Herodias joined him (which may, indeed, have been some little time after his first connexion with her) he had then been married to the daughter of Aretas for a considerable time (Antiq. Jud., XVIII. Mark 6:1; Mark 6:4). He also speaks of the repudiation of Aretas’ daughter as the beginning (be it observed) of the quarrel which led to the war between Antipas and the Arabian King in A. D. 36.”
Mark 6:25. By-and-by.—Instantly. Same word, ἐξαυτῆς, in Matthew 13:21; Luke 18:7; Luke 21:9.
Mark 6:26. Reject.—Disappoint, or break faith with.
Mark 6:27. Executioner.—The speculator was originally one whose duty it was to act as a spy or scout; then it came to be applied generally to any member of the armed body-guard of the Roman Emperor. Herod, who loved to imitate the customs of the Imperial Court, kept about him a company of speculatores to carry out his orders.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Mark 6:14-29
(PARALLELS: Matthew 14:1-2; Matthew 14:6-12; Luke 9:7-9.)
Death and burial of the Baptist.—John the Forerunner, like the Master whose way he came to prepare, died by violence. Both died in the prime of life; both were slain by cruel hands. John had precedence of Jesus both in the time and the manner of his death; for while Jesus died as a malefactor on the Cross of shame, John died the death of a Roman citizen by decapitation. Moreover, while mocking crowds insulted Jesus as He hung in the agonies of torture, John’s death was instantaneous and in the privacy of a dungeon.
I. Faithful goodness on the part of the Baptist.—
1. John was pre-eminently a good man. The light of personal holiness shone in all he said and did (John 5:35). When Christ challenged the Jews concerning him, no man durst speak disparagingly of him. The verdict of the whole land was in his favour (Mark 11:30-32).
2. John’s goodness was essentially faithful goodness. He had the courage of his convictions. He dared to press goodness upon a corrupt land, and to enforce holiness among a degenerate people. Wherever he saw sin he denounced it unsparingly, without respect of persons or consideration of self-interest (Luke 3:7-14; Matthew 3:7-10). Even the palace did not escape his faithful testimony to the truth; and as the truth was unpalatable, his adherence to it brought him at length to prison and to death. Ease, honour, and pleasure might all have been his, if he would but abstain from interfering with the guilty Herod; but these he regarded as but dross in comparison with a good conscience and a holy life—nay, life itself he gladly relinquished rather than swerve a hair’s-breadth from his loyalty to God.
II. Cruel sin on the part of his enemies.—
1. In Herod sin gained power day by day. Though all history brands him as vile and despicable in his iniquity to an unusual degree, yet sin was not always so strong in him as it became at last. By self-indulgence it gradually mastered him, in spite of checks and warnings, and even of convictions.
2. Bad as Herod was, Herodias was infinitely worse. Terrible as it is to be a great sinner, what is that to being a great tempter? We may, from the force of temptation, be led wrong ourselves; but calmly, persistently, and in cold blood to say and do and plan things destructive to the welfare of others is diabolical.
3. Sin is always a cruel thing. See here how it so steeled the heart of what was once a woman that she counselled murder in the gay moments of a birthday feast. There had been days of innocence now long gone by, when Herodias was a girl, a child, an infant. As she played by her mother’s knee, who could have foretold that those prattling, laughing lips would one day frame such a demand as this (Mark 6:24)? The various stages which led her step by step to such an abyss of inhuman cruelty it is not now possible to trace; nor is that necessary, for the course of sin never varies in its main features, but is ever the same,—as it flows on, it gradually carries all before it; it ever deepens, increases, hardens, and pollutes, until all high principle vanishes, every tender feeling is eradicated, all self-rule is destroyed, and the wretched victim is henceforth the slave of Satan, bound and tied by the chain of sin with which he once thought he was only amusing himself.
4. The hideous nature of sin is still more evident in the case of Herodias. For not only had she herself arrived at a fearful stage of cruelty, but she had brought herself to teach her own daughter the same. Can there be conceived a lower depth of depravity than that?
III. Swift retribution on the part of conscience.—The tragedy was soon ended; but its consequences were not so easily got rid of. “No matter that Herod was by profession a Sadducee, with no faith in the resurrection; his creed was forgotten in the superstitious dread which the memory of his crime fostered. The shade of the murdered prophet haunted him wherever he went; it followed him even beyond the seas; and the fear it engendered became a by-word and a proverb in Roman society, and furnished material for the biting satire of Persius,—
‘But when the feast of Herod’s birthday comes,
Thou mov’st thy lips, yet speak’st not in fear,
Thou keep’st the Sabbath of the circumcised,
And then there rise dark spectres of the dead.’
IV. Last offices of love on the part of John’s disciples.—“Whether or not there be any truth in the tradition that Herod threw the head over the walls of the black fortress of Machærus, where the bloody deed was done, we may be certain that his cruel paramour, when she had once got into her possession her strange plaything, on its golden charger, would never think of gratifying his disciples by giving it to them for decent burial. So that we may, with perfect certainty, conclude, in thinking of that funeral somewhere among the lonely wilds, on the eastern side of the Dead Sea, that it was a mutilated corpse that these men took up, and that, wrapping it in the garment of camel’s hair, with which they were so familiar, they tenderly and sadly placed in some cave of the desert. But we can well believe that, though in one sense not before them, that noble head was ever present to their mind’s eye, with the flowing locks that had never been cut, with its tongue that had never faltered in its holy message, and its eyes that had never flinched before tyrant mob or tyrant king. The very fact that they were close at hand when those services were required of them, in this distant place, shews the depth of their attachment to him. If they could not share his prison, they could at least keep near it, and shew their devotion and their love by ministering to him even when he was in the clutches of the cruel Herod; and now, when the end had come, they were there, ready to do their part, tenderly and courageously. They took his body—his poor, headless body—and buried it. It may be that before they left, when they had carefully closed the cave in which their dead was placed, they rudely scratched upon the rock some epitaph in his honour. What was it? Methinks it might well be the words in which His Master bore testimony to him: ‘Among them that are born of women, there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist.’ ”
Herod and John.—General history is at once an entertaining and an edifying study. It brings before us human agents with their passions and pursuits, and arrests our attention, and promotes our advantage by the virtues and vices which it exhibits, with their opposite consequences. Biography, or the history of particular persons, is in a high degree interesting and improving. It is like turning the attention from a general group in painting, and directing it to a single portrait, where we not only mark how the colours swell from the canvas, but study the turn and expression of every feature, and arrive at a knowledge of the character and disposition.
I. The weakness and degeneracy of human nature, by which we can be led to commit deeds which we regard as in the last degree heinous.—In speculation, and when left to the unbiassed dictates of our own hearts, guilt is always the object of our abhorrence. In a particular manner inhumanity and cruelty strike us as crimes of a most odious description, and we shrink from them as disgraceful to our nature. But the cool convictions of the moral principle weighing the merit of actions in abstract theory, and the inflamed suggestions of passion rushing to its object in real life, are widely different from each other; and though perfectly friendly to virtue in speculation, we may be led in practice to the perpetration of deeds fearful for atrocity. Watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation. Be not high minded, but fear. Strive, according to His working who worketh within you mightily. Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you.
II. The danger of bad counsel and bad company.—Herodias was the evident means of Herod’s great guilt. Of himself, it would appear that he was far from being an utterly depraved character. Though reproved by the Baptist, he had no wish to cast him into prison, nor would his anger ever have proceeded so far against him as to have taken away his life. But the artifices of her with whom he had connected himself in unlawful intercourse triumphed over his more amiable feelings, and in the end rendered him deaf to the remonstrances of conscience. Such is the usual effect of bad associates. If you have companions of this description, they will, how innocent soever or well disposed you may at present be, accomplish your destruction by availing themselves of all your weak and unguarded moments. They will not desist from their importunities till they have estranged you from God, and made you instruments of their unhallowed desires and passions. What have they to give that can be equivalent for such a sacrifice? The pleasures of guilt which awaken a foreboding that is never laid, though the pleasures themselves perish in the using.
III. The rapid progress of the sinner from guilt to guilt.—Herod not only continued in unlawful connexion with Herodias, but seized John for remonstrating with them, and cast him into prison. With this despotical stretch of his authority he was not long contented. The servant of God and the reprover of sin must not only be deprived of his liberty, he must be bereaved of his life. Do not suppose that the complicated guilt of this monster of iniquity can never become yours. Look into life, both low and high, and tremble for yourselves. In the humblest ranks of society you have repeated proofs of the progress of iniquity. There you see the artificer and the day-labourer, in their aversion to toil, ceasing to work with their accustomed regularity. Idleness involves them in want, and impels them to fraud and rapine, and every unlawful means of getting money. At length they lay hold of their neighbour’s person on the highway, and rob and plunder him, and murder him to escape detection. Ascend the scale, and you see similar results from similar beginnings. The libertine of fashion becomes at last fearless of God, and regardless of the rights and callous to the sufferings of his acquaintance. He contracts debts which he never intends to pay, ruins characters whom he promised to protect, seduces the unsuspecting from kindred and parents and home; and after being satiated with the pleasures of guilt, he abandons them without a scruple to poverty and misery. Extend your observations to the course of all the wicked, and you will see that when once men enter into the path of sin they seldom or never stop. But the vices not only spring out of each other, they increase perpetually in enormity. Herod began with an act of wrongful imprisonment; next he was guilty of a bloody murder; and, at an after-period, he surpassed even this complication of iniquity by insulting the last moments of Christ, and delivering Him into the hands of His enemies to be crucified as a traitor and blasphemer. Guard your heart; guard and fence your conduct; and beware of the repetition of any heinous act as certain to lead you to another still more heinous, till it end you in the extremity of guilt.
IV. The unspeakable terrors of an awakened conscience.—Impelled by passion and appetite, you may despise the monitor within, and rush on fearless of consequences. But all this obstinacy and intrepidity neither alters the nature of guilt nor ends the supremacy of conscience. The power of this moral ruler is suspended, not destroyed; and the recovery of its ascendency will prove to you most terrible. Then it will bring up your crimes, and marshal them in battle-array against you; and as the supposed return of the beheaded Baptist into life disturbed the heart of the king who murdered him, so shall they rack your soul with unspeakable horrors, and distract and drive you mad, with the prospect of final damnation.—W. Thorburn.
Imperfect reformation insufficient.—Herod’s proficiency in matter of religion.—
1. Herod’s preservation of John Baptist’s life, and sheltering and protecting him against Herodias’ malice. Wicked and unregenerate men may take such a liking to the Word of God, and be so affected with it, as to become maintainers and protectors and defenders of the servants of God that minister it to them.
2. The Word of God may so far prevail upon an unregenerate man as to work in him a fear and an awful regard, and to captivate him to the authority of religion in the servants of God.
(1) Did Herod stand in fear of John? ’Tis then no evidence of piety and goodness not to do evil for fear of others.
(2) Did Herod fear John, and keep within some compass and bounds of moderation because of John? In what case are they that are of his temper in the gospel, that could boast and profess that he neither feared God nor reverenced man? Licentious, audacious, profane wretches, such as those graceless Jews were, that, when they saw Stephen’s face shine like an angel, yet durst oppose him and offer violence to him.
3. A third effect that was wrought in Herod towards John Baptist is a worthy esteem and acknowledgment of John’s piety and sanctity, and those graces that were in him; he accounted him a just man and holy. Carnal and unconverted and sensual men yet can come thus far, as to have the virtues and graces that shine in others in a fair esteem and in some admiration.
4. There is a fourth effect wrought in Herod towards John Baptist—that is a reverent behaviour towards him. He observed him, had a care to please him in his demeanour; he would be loath to offend him as little as he could. A carnal, unconverted man may be so affected towards religion as to be willing to accommodate his carriage to the best content of the servants of God.
5. A fifth effect of John’s ministry in Herod is a willing attention to his preaching. “He heard him gladly.” Even an unregenerate man, living in a state of sensuality, may be a diligent, and constant, and willing, and ready frequenter of the preaching of the Word.
6. There is yet a further step of proficiency in Herod that was a very specious conformity to St. John’s doctrine. “He did many things”—yielded obedience to many instructions. An unregenerate man may come thus far, as to be won and persuaded by the Word to the performance of many good duties. Herod, it seems, yielded obedience to John’s preaching in many particulars.
(1) In his private conversation ’tis like he abstained from some vicious courses.
(2) In his public administration and government he listened to John in reforming of abuses, made many good laws for the well-ordering of his kingdom and repressing of vices.
(3) Was not wanting in ecclesiastical affairs. He countenanced John’s preaching, and assisted him against gainsayers and opposers. He did not only hear him gladly, but was persuaded by him to do, yea to do many things in conformity to his doctrine. ’Tis much to come thus far, not only to afford him audience, but to perform obedience: not to rest in the notional part, but to make some progress in the practical part of religion. Yet so did Herod and many others that never attained to true conversion, and so fell short of life and salvation.
II. The insufficiency of this his progress, and wherein it failed and came short.—
1. For his esteem and regard of John’s person and piety. ’Tis very questionable, as unsound, upon the suspicion of those false grounds, from which it did arise; and we may see three suspicious grounds of it.
(1) The first suspicious ground of this high esteem of John we may justly conceive was popularity. When religion is in request and grown into fashion, and becomes a matter of reputation, ’tis no great matter then to become an admirer and honourer of it.
(2) A second suspicious ground of Herod’s respect to John that makes it insufficient is policy. Herod was a fox, as our Saviour terms him. He thought it safe to hold in with John, to get him to the court, and to put countenance upon him; it would satisfy the people well.
(3) To make the best of it, a third ground of Herod’s good respect to John, that makes his proficiency to be insufficient, might be a natural ingenuity, a remainder of right reason and common honesty, which might be in Herod, and might move him to think well of John Baptist, and esteem worthily of him. Besides those things that are truly and properly spiritual, there are some excellences that do accompany piety and religion, that may be apprehended and well esteemed by mere natural men; and accordingly their natural ingenuity will affect and approve them, though they have no true relish of that which is indeed spiritual in piety and religion: thus deceiving their own hearts as if they loved religion for the sanctity of it. St. Gregory speaks excellently to this purpose: “Many a man deceives himself, and thinks he loves that in religion which indeed he loves not, but some other thing for it.” (a) Natural ingenuity will see and discern a great deal of innocence in religion. True piety and Christianity will make Christians unblamable, inoffensive, and of a harmless conversation, so that they gain a good report of them that are without. (b) Ingenuity observes a great deal of utility and profitableness in religion. Good Christians are not only harmless and inoffensive, but they are useful and helpful, and beneficial to the times and places wherein they live. (c) Ingenuity can observe a great deal of beauty and comeliness in religion. Piety, when it appears in the life of a Christian, is exceedingly lovely; as Solomon speaks, it makes the face to shine. It was not John’s piety that relished with Herod, but these condimenta pietatis which were as sauces and sweetenings unto it.
2. His diligent attention to John’s preaching and ministry: he heard him gladly. But even this forwardness falls short and will appear insufficient upon two suspicions.
(1) We have just cause to suspect his disposition out of which he did it. (a) All this his forwardness in hearing, it was but a passion, a pleasure, and a delight that he took, and that brought him on to give John the hearing. (b) His delight and joy was too forward. Some other motion and affection should have been stirred up in him. No question, John’s preaching, had it been suffered to work kindly, would have stirred up fear, and care, and sorrow, and repentance, and humiliation: we hear of none of these; but only Herod’s fancy was taken, and begat delight in him. The matter of salvation, ’tis not a jocund and a sporting work; it must be wrought out with fear and trembling. (c) He delighted in John’s preaching with the same affection that he shewed in other things. John preaches, and he pleases him; Herodias dances, and she pleases him,—no difference. A religious man, even in outward delights, rejoices spiritually; a carnal man, even in spiritual things, rejoices carnally. (d) It was a passion of joy in hearing the Word; but it was yet controllable, and easily overcome by another delight. His birthday joy, and his delight he takes in the damsel’s dancing, hath exceeded and overcome all the delight he took in John. Was Herod ever so much taken with John’s preaching as to yield to him so great a suit as he granted to his minstrel?
(2) The motives that made him thus attentive are very suspicious. (a) Was it not the novelty of John’s teaching that did thus delight him? Let John hold on for some time, all this forwardness will cool again. Tis but the crackling of thorns in the fire; a sudden blaze for a time, and soon out again. (b) Was it not some generality of truth that might give Herod content? No doubt John had many deep discourses in matters of divinity about the nature of God and the controversies of the times. And Herod can hear these discourses gladly. There is in many men a kind of spiritual lust in their understanding, that is much pleased with such high strains and contemplative discourses. (c) ’Tis like John’s preaching cleared a great doubt and scruple in Herod’s mind concerning the Messiah that had much troubled him. That Christ’s kingdom was not of this world, that Christianity teaches obedience to worldly powers and potentates, doth not disturb them, much less destroy them—this doctrine was welcome to Herod; he heard it gladly. (d) John had his thunderings against the Pharisees and Sadducees, and the priests, and scribes, and doctors of the law; he was a sharp reprover of vice and disorders; he taught the soldiers to be content with their wages, and not to mutiny. And Herod could hear other men’s faults taxed and reproved; it was music to him. (e) Were there not some personal excellences in John’s preaching that Herod delighted in—his wit, or elocution, or some graceful delivery?
3. The third thing considerable is Herod’s conformity to John’s preaching; he yielded to his doctrine in many things, and submitted to it. He was not a bare auditor, gave John the hearing only, but made some progress in practice too. John’s preaching prevailed with him, and made him do many things. Now, surely, a very specious conformity, had it not some suspicions and failings in it.
(1) This conformity is suspicious, because—(a) These many things which Herod did, they were some light, easy performances. He put himself to no great pain in this doing or forbearing. Canst thou mortify thy dearest sins, cross thy lusts, and strive against them? work thyself to the practice of those good duties that are painful and laborious? Such a conformity argues truth of grace in thee. (b) These many things which Herod did, ’tis like they were some plausible performances that the world will take notice of and speak well of; such make for Herod’s reputation in the world, and you may win him unto them. But try Herod with the more inward and private and secret parts of piety, that men cannot discern or take notice of; thy secret devotion and prayer to God, thy daily bewailing thy sins ’twixt God and thine own conscience, and the strivings of thy soul against sinful inclinations, thine alms in secret, as Christ directs,—oh! these make no noise, they are not matter of ostentation; and so Herod forbears them. (c) These many things that Herod did might be some civil and public and outward administrations, the redress of public abuses, some good orders published and enjoyed. No doubt many an honest cause sped the better for John, the course of justice went on more speedily. These good duties put Herod to no great trouble or pain. ’Tis more hard to mortify one bosom sin that thy soul delights in, than to bring thyself to the outward performance of the whole law of God.
(2) As the obedience of Herod was suspicious, so we find it to be failing and defective. He did many things, but yet fell short; he failed in other things; he dispensed with himself for some sins which he would not part with. This he would do, but that he would not do. ’Twas like Naaman’s conversion; he promises some duties in religion, but sues for a dispensation in others. “Herein God be merciful to me: this sin I cannot part with.” Whereas entire and universal obedience is only acceptable and of account with God (Psalms 119:6). Satan knows this so well that he can be content to have us yield to God in many things, only be true to Satan in some one thing. He knows one dram of poison may spoil all the wholesome ingredients, and make them deadly. One dead fly may taint the most precious ointment, saith Solomon. One sin unrepented of and retained in practice, the cherishing of one lust, will corrupt all other laudable and commendable duties. “As a bird,” saith Chrysostom, “if the snare catch but one of her feet, though her wings be free and ready for flight, yet she is taken, and becomes a prey to the fowler.” Or as Augustine compares it, “Though all the parts of our body be sound, save only one, that one diseased and ulcerous part may be deadly to thee. All the sound members cannot preserve life; but even one diseased member shall hasten thy death.” (a) See John’s fidelity. For all Herod’s forwardness, he will not abate him the commission of one gross sin. (b) See John’s simplicity. A politic man would have winked at this one fault of Herod, thought it wisdom to preserve his interest with Herod. “I may prevail much with him, if I hold good terms with him; many good causes may speed the better, if I hold fair with Herod; but to deal roughly with him, and affront him in his sin, may set him farther off—no good shall be done with him.” No; John’s piety abhors this policy. God allows no such compliances upon any such pretences. (c) See John’s importunity in admonishing of Herod. He tells him plainly of his sin. John must do his duty, though it cost him the loss of Herod’s favour—ay, and his life too. And so it did; and that will give you to see Herod’s deficiency, to what he falls, even to open persecution.
Lessons.—
1. Bare formality in matters of religion is not lasting. It will wear off—like some waterish colours that are lightly laid on, will fade and vanish, are of no continuance.
2. One unmortified sin wilfully retained will eat out all appearances of virtue and piety.
3. An unmortified sin, rather than be crossed, will fall to persecution. Reigning sins will at last prove raging sins, and grow impatient of any reproof. Cast pearls and precious truths before fierce dogs, they will not only trample them under their feet, but will rend and worry you (Matthew 7:6). This is the dreadful downfall of unsoundness in religion. A false friend to religion will at last prove an open enemy to it.—Bishop Brownrigg.
OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Mark 6:14. Lessons.—
1. The innocence and uprightness of God’s faithful servants are of great power to strike terror into their wicked enemies, and that not only while living, but even after their death.
(1) The best way for God’s servants to dismay their enemies is to walk in holiness and innocence of life.
(2) Beware of offering wrong to any innocent and holy servant of God, lest thy conscience terrify thee for it.
2. This is one effect and property of a guilty conscience: to disquiet and vex the heart with great terrors and fears—yea, often with vain fears for which there is no cause (Job 15:21; Isaiah 57:20; Deuteronomy 28:65; Leviticus 26:36; Proverbs 28:1).
3. Sin once committed lies heavy on the conscience, accusing and troubling it long afterwards (Genesis 42:21; Psalms 25:7).
4. Murder, or shedding of innocent blood, is such a sin as will lie heavy on the conscience of those guilty of it, breeding great terror to them (Genesis 4:13; Psalms 51:14).—G. Petter.
Mark 6:15. The speculators of society.—Conscience is hardly concerned in their case. They give themselves to the consideration of mere problems or puzzles. They represent, too, the persons who can talk about religious subjects without having any religious feeling. Religion is to them only a topic of the day. It is something to be remarked upon, and then dropped in favour of something else. There are men around ourselves who suppose that to admire a preacher is to admire Christ, and that to be critical about sermons is to be concerned about truth.—J. Parker, D.D.
The judgment of the world is very uncertain in all things, but extremely blind in those which relate to God. There are no conjectures so extravagant but men will have recourse to them rather than believe the Word of God: so corrupt is the heart of man, so true is it, that blindness is the just punishment of incredulity. These Jews, in their several judgments, afford us a lively representation of those pretended masters of reason who affect always singularity in their opinions, and who believe everything except truth.—P. Quesnel.
Mark 6:16. Conscience.—
1. Conscience will not be silenced by wealth or earthly surroundings.
2. A guilty conscience is troubled with not only real but imaginary troubles.
3. A guilty conscience will torment a man in spite of his avowed religious belief.—T. Kelly.
Conscience bribed.—We all of us do evil things that it is not hard for us to seem to forget, and with regard to which it is not hard for us to bribe or to silence our memories and our consciences. The hurry and bustle of daily life, the very weakness of our characters, the rush of sensuous delights, may make us blind and deaf to the voice of conscience; and we think that all chance of the evil deed rising again to harm us is past. But some trifle touches the hidden spring by mere accident. As in the old story of the man groping along a wall, till his finger happened to fall upon one inch of it, and immediately the hidden door flies open and there is the skeleton, so with any of us some merely fortuitous association may freshen faded memories and wake a dormant conscience. An apparently trivial circumstance, like some hooked pole pushed at random into the sea, may bring up by the locks some pale and drowned memory long plunged in an ocean of oblivion.—A. Maclaren, D.D.
Unbelief and superstition.—There is a very close connexion, as all history proves, between theoretical disbelief in a future life and spiritual existence and superstition. So strong is the bond that unites men with the unseen world, that if they do not link themselves with that world in the legitimate and true fashion, it is almost certain to avenge itself upon them by leading them to all manner of low and abject superstitions. Spiritualism is the disease of a generation that disbelieves in another life. The French Revolution with its infidelities was also the very seed-field for all manner of quacks and impostors such as Cagliostro and the like. The time when Christ lived presented precisely the same phenomena. If Herod was a Sadducee, Herod’s Sadduceeism, like the frost upon the window-panes, was such a thin layer shutting out the invisible world that the least warmth of conscience melted it, and the clear daylight glared in upon him. And I am afraid that there are a great many of us who may be half inclined to regret supernatural religion and the thought of another life who would find precisely the same thing happening to them.—Ibid.
Mark 6:17. Persecution of the good.—
1. Think it no new or strange thing if in our times we see good and faithful ministers unjustly troubled and persecuted by those in authority, and that even for the faithful discharge of their ministry. Pray for them, and use all good means to help them.
2. Let all faithful ministers prepare and arm themselves for troubles and persecutions in the world (Matthew 10:24).
3. It should comfort and encourage faithful ministers to bear such troubles patiently, and not be dismayed at them, seeing they suffer no other but what the most excellent prophets and ministers of God have gone through before them.
4. See the wretched blindness and corruption of our nature, causing us to hate and persecute such as are called and sent of God to do us good—yea, the greatest good.—G. Petter.
The propensity of the heart to self-delusion.—It is not improbable that Herod, conscious as he was that he most unjustly detained John the Baptist in prison, applauded himself with complacency, and assumed in his own estimation great credit for virtue, because he had withstood the solicitations of Herodias for his death. Have you not also, while aware that you have lived under the habitual influence of some unchristian temper, in the habitual indulgence of some unchristian practice, proudly congratulated yourself on your goodness, because you have abstained from other crimes to which you were tempted? Have you not satisfied yourself for yielding to the one temptation by reminding your conscience that you did not yield to the other? Have not you hankered after a compromise with Divine justice, and meditated with complacent self-righteousness the production of a balance of imaginary merit to countervail the penalty of guilt? See Haggai 1:5; Isaiah 44:20; Revelation 3:17; Galatians 3:10. If example can affect you, look to that of Herod. Behold in him an illustration of the consequences entailed on perseverance in a single sin. In him behold a picture of that abandoned depravity of which perseverance in a single sin is naturally the forerunner. Is there an Herodias whom you will not put away? Let suitable temptations arise, and guilt equal to that of Herod may become yours.—T. Gisborne, D.D.
Mark 6:18. The duty of reproving sin.—
1. Ministers ought not to wink at sin in those of their charge, not to be silent at the committing of it; but to admonish and reprove the same as occasion offers, in public and private (2 Timothy 4:2; Titus 2:15).
2. Ministers must deal impartially in admonishing and reproving sin, not only in mean persons, but in the great ones.
3. Such as have a call to reprove sin in others should do it plainly and directly, shewing them their sin, and the danger of it by the Word of God, in such sort as they may be in conscience convinced of it.—G. Petter.
Mark 6:19. Hatred against reprovers.—It is very shocking, but is there nothing in our own hearts that can interpret to us this woman’s hate? Has the reproof of some cherished sin never stirred within us a feeling of bitter enmity towards the reprover? Doubtless we should shrink back in horror from the mere thought of murder; but, remember, the spirit of hatred, of revenge, whether it lead to murder or stop short at some lesser vengeance, is essentially the same (Matthew 5:21-22).—W. T. Wilson.
Mark 6:20. Vice respects virtue.—Feared John there in prison?—feared the helpless captive, bound and confined far from the sight of a friend? A trait how deeply true to the human soul! Yes, vice must respect virtue all the time: ever putting it to shame, counter-mining and insulting it, banishing it, loading it with chains, it must fearfully respect it. Is it not so? Whenever you have been the aggressor in any difference or quarrel with a fellow-man, though you may have added defence to defence, and piled vindication on vindication, have you been able, after all, to uproot a deep-seated regard even for him you differed with? When the passion and turbid commotion of the hour have passed by, has not that solemn regard subsided to the very bottom of your mind, and, in the light of transparent reflexion, made you ashamed of yourself, if not caused you to stand aghast at the wrong you see scored against you, as with the point of a diamond, on the page of your own heart?—C. A. Bartol.
Religion too costly for Herod.—Think of all the weary steps which Herod must retrace before he could be even on a moral level to start on St. John’s principles of religion. Perhaps in intense moments, when martyrdom was the consequence, it would have been in some ways easier to make a profession—to stand forth from the parody of baptism on the stage, and to own oneself converted and be torn to death—to jump down into the amphitheatre where men were fighting, and say, “You shall not do it,” and be cut to pieces—to be carried away by the impulse of a great movement, and die in the heat of enthusiasm. But in the quiet of a great lull, among people who are not intensely committed one way or another, to alter the mode of life, to cut away with their own hands the hindrances and barriers, to be known to have plucked out a right eye or to have cut off a right foot, to be earnestly preaching renunciation instead of a faint disapproval of things which we do not think are quite right, to be practising faith instead of an eclectic appreciation, an earnest practice of true religion instead of being “an honorary member of all forms of belief”—it costs a good deal, it means a good deal. Herod shrinks from it; giving up that bad connexion was not so much in itself, but it meant a good deal, and there was more than one person to be considered.—Canon Newbolt.
“Did many things.”—What those “many things” were which Herod amended at the bidding of John we vainly surmise. A few of the grosser corruptions of his foul court were perchance removed, or it may be John could hold back the stubborn king in some one occasional act of cruelty, or persuade him to pay some attention to the outward worship of God; but he could not, did not, win him to a thorough reformation of his own life. It was all surface work. The deep, ingrained depravity was not shaken off. There was pleasure in hearing truth—a partial obedience to truth—but not a thorough casting away of impurity and cruelty and fraud. And we know the result. The evil spirit, driven out in a measure, returned again. One day of excess, one hour of ungoverned passion, swept away the edifice of sand, and a crime which stamps him for ever in the ranks of the Pilates and Judases, the unjust judges and false friends, plunged his soul again into unutterable darkness. The only voice which had ever stirred the better spirit within him was quenched in blood, and the last state became worse than the first.—Bishop Woodford.
Herod and John.—Here are two men, each swayed by his past, each working out a future; living in the same age, within touch, as it were, of the same wonderful crisis of history—with the same God, the same nature, the same heaven to win, the same hell to avoid. And now under the same roof, and yet how separated in every possible way! With a value to the world which varied with terrible irony in inverse ratio to their outward circumstances! The one pledged up to the hilt to the service of God, the maintenance of principle, and the integrity of his life; the other a mere plaything of the world, tossed up and down like a cork upon its turbulent waters, the victim of every whim, the slave of every pleasure, hounded along by his lusts, his very principle of morality given in pawn to an adulteress; and yet with a lingering appreciation still left of a noble character when he saw one; the power of still snatching at an ornament which he had sense enough left to know was precious, as it was swept by on the waves. It was politic to shut up the open-mouthed prophet. Yes; but that was not all—he had liked to keep him by him. His stern words roused a delightful thrill of self-distrust; gave him, if we follow one reading of the passage, deep perplexity; perhaps even led him to do certain things, to take certain steps in the direction of right; and, at all events, it was a real pleasure to him to hear him speak on great and deep subjects. It might be just a link with a better past to have a prophet on the premises, albeit in the dungeon.—Canon Newbolt.
The downward path.—In our own days, amidst our own homes, there are souls taking the downward path, because they, like Herod, will not give up their besetting sin. Perhaps it is the seductive wine-cup, perhaps the perilous friendship of some sceptic. Perhaps it is the strange delusion which makes the happiness of some men—adding bid to bit of shining metal, of which they make no use; or that sin in disguise, the idolatry of self, making everything and everybody bow down to one’s own ease and comfort! One is reminded of the account given of the way in which old Westminster Bridge came to ruin. The stone-work piers on which the arches rested were built on piles of wood firmly driven into the river’s bed; but the scour of the ebbing tides, and the force of the currents, swept away the earth and gravel from around the piles, till they were no longer secure. So with the soul. We make firm resolutions, as we think, and for a time they last; but the powerful stream of temptation gradually loosens them, and the whole superstructure of the Christian life is ready to fall in pieces. Many a gallant ship has been wrecked by a simple leak; so one sin worked the ruin of Herod Antipas.—Dr. Hardman.
Mark 6:21. A convenient day.—A crime is more than half committed when it is once resolved on; a convenient day cannot be long wanting to a passion so violent and vigilant as revenge animated by an infamous love. The feasts of the world are days very convenient for sin, as the feasts of the Church are for piety. It is a great misfortune to be engaged to be at the former; a great imprudence not to provide against the infectious air which is there breathed; a great piece of unfaithfulness not to excuse ourselves from going when we can; and a very great folly to appear there without any manner of obligation.—P. Quesnel.
Mark 6:22. Lessons.—
1. How dangerous it is to make rash and unadvised promises!
2. How much wicked men are addicted to their sinful lusts, and what great account they make of them in that they are content, for the satisfying of them, to be at great cost and charge!
3. The cursed fruit and effect of sin and sinful lusts in such as are given over to them; that they even besot them and make them foolish, depriving them of sound reason and judgment (Hosea 4:11; Romans 1:21; Romans 1:28; Proverbs 7:22; Proverbs 23:35).—G. Petter.
Mark 6:25. Resist solicitation to sin.—Allow not yourself to be entrapped into sin by the solicitations and importunities of others, not even of your friends and your nearest relations, should you be unhappy enough to perceive tempters among them. You will not be urged, it may be presumed, to procure the imprisonment or the murder of another. But were tempters ever at a loss for grounds of temptation? If you are in poverty, may they not impel you to meliorate your condition by depredations on the property of a neighbour, or to excite charity by exaggerated representations of your distress? Are you moving in a higher sphere? May they not ensnare you into captivity to ambition, or seduce you into the habit of squandering in dissipation that sacred talent, time, entrusted to your charge? And whether you occupy a lower or a higher station, may they not encourage you to over-reach an ignorant or a careless man in a contract; to revenge yourself on some person who has offended you, or whom you envy, by spreading a slanderous tale to his disadvantage; to withhold reparation from those whom you have wronged; to surrender your heart to things temporal; to live not unto God and Christ, but unto the world and yourself? Stand prepared upon the watch-tower. Obey the Lord Omnipotent, not man. Resist the assaults of the devil, whatever be the instruments which he employs. Away with fear, with irresolution, with false shame. Be strong in the grace of Christ.—T. Gisborne, D.D.
Callousness in youth.—This is a picture of human sin more loathsome, it seems to me, than the other. For this damsel could have had no revengeful hate, no vindictive passion, rankling in her heart. The prophet had not rebuked her. Hers was a cool, deliberate, passionless cruelty—cruelty at which one shudders when associated with her age and sex; for if not with youth and girlhood, where should pity and compassion dwell? Doubtless Salome had a motive. Perhaps she feared the loss of her position and her pleasures, and fear can be quite as powerful an incentive to crime as revenge or hate. The prophet had unwittingly laid his hand upon this young girl’s world, and she turned again and stung him. Ah! believe me; youth, apparently so bright and fresh and winning, if you venture to touch its pleasures, can show a callousness, a steely hardness of the heart, which you would have deemed incredible.—W. T. Wilson.
Lessons.—
1. How apt children are by nature to follow wicked counsel and advice given them by their parents!
2. The wicked make but a light matter of sin—yea, of great and grievous sins, such as murder.—G. Petter.
Mark 6:26. Herod’s dilemma.—The dilemma of Herod was the dilemma of a man whose conduct was governed not by the principles of an immutable morality, the eternal distinctions of right and wrong, but by a vague superstition and a miserable conventionalism. The petty rules and obligations which he recognised were below the requirements and emergencies of life, and therefore only served to betray him into sin.
1. Is it not strange to hear this man, face to face with crime, pleading the sanctity of an oath to justify his commission of it? What a moral bewilderment was that! Had Herod been a man of pure life and clear conscience, how long would such a monstrous sophism have entangled him? The guilt of such oaths consists in making and keeping them, not in breaking them. If they are registered at all, it is not in heaven, but in hell.
2. Reference to the opinion of the world, and deference to it, and conference with it, and preference of it above every principle and rule and law, human or Divine—is not this a tendency that grows upon us very, very fast?
3. Is idle sorrow ever availing? It did not save John. Will it save Herod at the day of judgment?—W. T. Wilson.
Conscience darkened by sin.—The pleasures which chiefly affect or rather bewitch the body, and by so doing become the pest and poison of the nobler and intellectual part of man, are those false and fallacious pleasures of lust and intemperance.… Nothing does or can darken the mind or conscience of man more.… Could Herod have ever thought himself obliged by the religion of an oath to murder the Baptist, had not his lust and his Herodias imprisoned and murdered his conscience first?… It seems his besotted conscience, having broken through the seventh commandment, the sixth stood too near it to be safe long.—R. South, D.D.
Herod’s duty plain.—The case cannot be supposed wherein a man should be so straitened as he could not come off fairly without sinning. Say a man through heat of blood made a wicked vow to kill his brother: here he hath, by his own rashness, brought himself into a seeming strait, that either he must commit a murder or break a vow—either of which seemeth to be a great sin, the one against the sixth, the other against the third commandment. But here is in very deed no strait nor perplexity at all. Here is a fair, open course to him without sin. He may break his vow, and there is an end. Neither is this the choice of the lesser sin; but only the loosening of the lesser bond—the bond of charity being greater than the bond of a promise, and there being good reason that (in terms of inconsistency, when both cannot stand) the lesser bond should yield to the greater. But is it not a sin for a man to break a vow? Yes, where it may be kept salvis charitate et justitiâ; then the breach is a sin; but in the case proposed it is no sin (Exodus 1:16, etc.; Judges 11:30-31; Acts 23:12).—Bishop Sanderson.
Mark 6:27. Guilty compliance.—Thus it has often been: what is noblest and best sacrificed, not to policy or necessity, or in the hot, fierce conflict of opposing issues, but in a mood of dalliance, and in compliance with what appeals to the baser part of our nature. There is cruelty in the brutal fury of a mob; there is cruelty in the vindictive apprehension of an imperilled order; but there is no cruelty equal to the cruelty of thorough worldliness—the light, careless gaiety which sends a prophet to the block because the wine flows, and the jest goes round, and the thrilling mazes of a voluptuous dance have fired the heart of King Herod.—W. T. Wilson.
Mark 6:29. Lessons.—
1. Such as have reaped spiritual good and profit by others do owe special thankfulness to them; and this thankfulness they ought to shew toward them by the fruits of it, in doing duties of love to them; and that not only in their lifetime, but even after they are dead.
2. It is a duty of love and mercy which we owe to our Christian friends departed this life, to be careful to bury them in good and decent manner, and with such honour and respect as is fitting to their persons.
3. God takes special care of the good name and credit of His faithful servants, even after they are dead and gone (Psalms 112:6; Proverbs 10:7).—G. Petter.
John’s mission fulfilled.—So ended to human eyes the life and ministry of St. John the Baptist. But if we regard this as the real end of all, we manifestly make an infinite mistake: St. John had made preparation for the coming of Christ, and now Christ was come, and so St. John was called to his rest, and his works followed him. And we may draw from his history this conclusion, applicable to our own times—namely, that when missionaries of Christ’s gospel lose their lives in the work, have their heads cut off, it may be, by savages, and when their bodies are buried in the tomb, the end is not yet; they have prepared the way for the coming of Christ, and their work will not be useless in the eye of Him whom appearances can never deceive.—Bishop H. Goodwin.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 6
Mark 6:16. Herod’s thoughts.—What were Herod’s thoughts? Not long before a remarkable poem had been written in which the hero is represented as having entered by the Sybil’s agency the dark regions of Tartarus, the abode of the spirits of the departed dead. There, crowding around him, are multitudes of shadowy forms, wearing the semblance of what they bore whilst on earth. Flitting in restless disquietude are the unburied dead; there, too, are parricides, dishonest trustees who have wronged widows and orphans, betrayers of the honour of wife and country, all showing in phantom face and visage that they are enduring the righteous retribution of the gods. And there, likewise, in more blissful regions are the ghosts who, when alive on earth, did good and honourable deeds. Amidst the throng he recognises his honoured father, whom, indeed, he had come to see, and he receives from him sundry admonitions as to the future of his race and country, and the duties thereby required. He inquires if the shades of the dead wish or are allowed to revisit the upper world, and the answer he receives seems to leave the question somewhat open, and is followed by a philosophical disquisition on the nature and origin of the creation. That poem was dedicated to Augustus, the immediate predecessor of Tiberius, the then wearer of the imperial purple, and had been rehearsed before him in the presence of his court. The poem, like all great poems, reflected not only the thoughts of the age, but the thoughts of human nature itself. Had Herod heard it or read it? Most likely he had. Was he acquainted with the history of the Sybil, and the Sybilline Oracles? If so, there would be no antecedent improbability in the reappearance of John the Baptist. Nay, similar apparitions were reported to have been actually seen. Thus the ghost of the mighty Cæsar was said to have appeared to his murderer, and to have summoned him to a meeting after the fateful field at Philippi. Jewish traditions told, too, of the apparition of the prophet Samuel to Saul with the awful message, “To-day shalt thou and thy sons be with me.” If, then, the Baptist were risen from the dead, no wonder that mighty works should shew forth themselves in him. But to whom should his first visit be more likely paid than to his murderer? and what would be the terrible nature of his message? In vain the licentious dances of voluptuous women, the flattery of his courtiers, the luxuries of his table! They could not stifle the whispers of the inward monitor; adultery and murder were ugly facts, and so Herod might have said with Juvenal,—
“If the anger of the gods be great, yet certainly it is slow;
If, therefore, they take care to punish all the guilty,
When will they come to me?”
Sat.xiii., l. 100.
Stings of conscience.—Henry of Essex, struck down in a duel, attributed his defeat to the imagined appearance of a knight whom he had murdered standing by the side of his adversar’. Speaking of the man who planned the massacre of Glencoe, Macaulay tells us that Breadalbane felt the stings of conscience. He went to the most fashionable coffee-house in Edinburgh, and talked loudly about what he had done among the mountains; but some of his soldiers observed that all this was put on. He was not the same man that he had been before. In all places, at all hours, working or sleeping, Glencoe was for ever before him.
Rustled by a breeze.—There is a species of poplar whose leaves are often rustled by a breeze too faint to stir the foliage of other trees. Noticing the fact one day when there was scarce a breath of air, Gotthold thought within himself, “This tree is the emblem of a man with a wounded and uneasy conscience, which takes alarm at the most trifling cause, and agitates him so that he knows not whither to fly.”
A guilty conscience.—King Theodoric could not endure the senator Symmachus, a good and virtuous man, so he caused him to be put to death. But after this proceeding he lost his accustomed high spirits, and took to looking gloomy and soliloquising apart. One day while at dinner, on a fish being served, he thought he saw the head of Symmachus attached to the body, and this optical illusion caused his death.—Bessus, while surrounded by his courtiers, suddenly drew his sword, and rushing at a nest of swallows, hacked the whole family to death. Having been allowed time to recover himself after this unwonted exertion, he was asked the reason for his sudden outbreak, when, in a virtuously indignant tone, he replied, “Did you not hear them reproach me with the murder of my father?” It afterwards transpired that he was really guilty of this crime.
Mark 6:18. Testimony before Kings.—On one occasion St. Hugh is reported to have said to King John, “I trust you mean what you say; you know I dislike lies.” He warned him also against trusting to a stone amulet which he wore round his neck, saying, “Trust not in that senseless stone, but in the Living Stone, the Lord Jesus Christ.” And at Fontevrault he pointed out to John a sculpture of the Day of Judgment, with a group of crowned kings being led away by demons to the smoking pit.
Mark 6:20. Reverence for the good.—We may be reminded perhaps of our own monarch Charles II., who certainly reverenced Bishop Ken and several others like him, and reverenced them because they were just men, but who could not shake himself free from his lusts and submit himself to their teaching.
Royal inability.—Palissy, the famous French potter, was imprisoned in the Bastille, when nearly eighty years old, on account of his religious opinions. The King of France visited him, and strove to make him recant. “My good man,” said the King, “you have been forty-five years in the service of my mother, or in mine, and we have suffered you to live in your own religion, amidst all the executions and the massacres. Now, however, I am so pressed that I have been compelled in spite of myself to imprison you; you will be burnt, if you will not be converted.” “Sire,” answered Palissy, “you have said several times that you feel pity for me; but it is I who pity you, who have said, I am compelled. That is not speaking like a king. I will teach you to talk royally. All your people and yourself cannot compel a potter to bow down to images of clay.”
Mark 6:25. Unwomanly women.—There is a similar instance in Roman history of a woman requiring the head of an enemy to be brought to her. Agrippina, the mother of Nero, who was afterwards emperor, sent an officer to put to death Lollia Paulina, who had been her rival for the imperial dignity. When Lollia’s head was brought to her, not knowing it at first, she examined it with her own hands, till she perceived some particular feature by which that lady was distinguished.
Mark 6:29. Relics of the Baptist.—At Sebaste (Samaria) a dungeon is pointed out as the place where the Baptist was beheaded, though Josephus says it took place in the castle of Machærus. At any rate he seems to have been buried at Samaria, “between two prophets,” Mandeville declares, “Elisha and Abdias.” In the time of Julian some pagans broke into the tomb, burnt the bones, and scattered the ashes to the winds. Some small portions were collected by the Christians, and sent to St. Athanasius at Alexandria, where the Emperor Theodosius, in 396 A.D., built a magnificent church for their reception.