And when his disciples heard of it, they came and took up his corpse, and laid it in a tomb.
And when his disciples heard of it-that is, the Baptist's own disciples, they came and took up his corpse, and laid it in a tomb - "and went and told Jesus" (Matthew 14:12). If these disciples had, up to this time, stood apart from Him, as adherents of John (Matthew 11:2), perhaps they now came to Jesus, not without some secret reflection on Him for His seeming neglect of their master; but perhaps, too, as orphans, to cast in their lot henceforth with the Lord's disciples. How Jesus felt, or what He said, on receiving this intelligence is not recorded; but He of whom it was said, as He stood by the grave of His friend Lazarus, "Jesus wept," was not likely to receive such intelligence without deep emotion. And one reason why He might not be unwilling that a small body of John's disciples should cling to him to the last, might be to provide some attached friends who should do for his precious body, on a small scale, what was afterward to be done for His own.
Remarks:
(1) The truth of the Gospel History is strikingly illustrated in this section. Had the Life of Christ which it contains been a literary invention, instead of a historical reality, the last thing probably which the writers would have thought of would have been to terminate the life of His honoured forerunner in the way here recorded. When we read it, we at once feel that, to be written, it must have been real. But we turn to the Jewish historian, and in his Antiquities of his nation we find precisely the same account of the Baptist's character, his fidelity to Herod, and his death, which is here given-with just this difference, that Josephus, as might be expected, presents rather the public bearings of this event, while our Evangelists treat it solely with reference to the Baptist's connection with his blessed Master. Thus each throws light upon the other.
(2) When men in power connect themselves, whether by marriage or otherwise, with unprincipled women, they usually become their tools, and are not unfrequently dragged by them to ruin. Illustrations of this are furnished by history from the days of that accursed Jezebel, who first drew Ahab into the commission of treason against the God of Israel and the murder of his own subjects, and then hurried him to destruction; and of Herodias, who was the means of imbruing the hands of Herod Antipas in the blood of the saintly John the Baptist, and was the occasion of that war which proved so fatal to him, down to pretty modern times. And might not the working of the same passions to similar issues be seen in the history of less exalted persons, if only it were written? A warning this, surely, against such unhallowed unions.
(3) When we read of Herodias, how she shed, not with her own hand nor by her own immediate order, the blood of this faithful witness for the truth, but only got it done by the secular arm, and how she then gloated over it-we can hardly help thinking that, when the harlot-Church was depicted by the apocalyptic seer, as a "woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus" (Revelation 17:6), this bloody adulteress, Herodias, must have sat for her picture. For the apocalyptic woman does not herself shed the blood of saints or martyrs, nor order them to be slain; it is "the beast" - the secular power of apostate Christendom-that makes war against the saints, the faithful witnesses for the truth, and overcomes them, and kills them (Revelation 11:7; Revelation 8:7). But yet the "woman" rides this beast, seen as a scarlet coloured, or bloody, beast (Revelation 17:6); the secular power acting according to her dictates, in ridding her of those hateful witnesses against her abominations as a horse obeys his rider; while she herself is represented as drunken with their blood-revelling in her freedom from their withering rebukes. Can so vivid and deep an analogy be quite accidental?
(4) Fidelity in testifying against sin, though some times rewarded here, is not unfrequently allowed to be borne at the cost of temporal interests, liberty, and even life itself. How easily could He who healed the sick, cleansed the lepers, opened blind eyes, and raised even the dead to life, have interposed for the rescue of His true-hearted servant from the rage of Herodias, that he should not have been deprived of his liberty, and at least that his precious life should be spared! But He did not do it. Instead of this He suffered His public career to be closed by arrest and imprisonment; and after lying long in prison, and without any light as to his prospects-in answer to a deputation which he sent expressly from his prison-He allowed him to seal his testimony with his blood in that gloomy cell, with none to comfort him, and none to witness the deed but the bloody executioner, as if to proclaim to his servants in all time what He had bidden the messengers say to himself, "Blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in Me." How noble was the answer of the three Hebrew youths to King Nebuchadnezzar, when he threatened them with the burning fiery furnace if they would not fall down and worship the golden image which he had set up - " If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace; and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king.
But if not, be it known unto thee, O king: that we will not serve thy gods," etc. (Daniel 3:17-18). They had full confidence that deliverance would be vouchsafed for the honour of Yahweh's name. But they might in that be mistaken; He might not see it fit to interpose; and "if not," then they were prepared to burn for Him: but deliverance or none, they were resolved not to sin. And that is the spirit in which all Christ's servants should take up their cross; prepared to be nailed to it, if necessary, which it may or may not be-they cannot tell-rather than prove faithless to the Lord Jesus.
Here, for the first time, all the four streams of sacred text run parallel The occasion, and all the circumstances of this grand section are thus brought before us with a vividness quite remarkable.