77. B.C. 37 to B.C. 4

B.C. 37 to B.C. 4

Chapter I

Timeline View:

1. We now find upon the throne of Judea the man who comes down to us as Herod “the Great,” and who certainly manifested in no common degree the qualities to which greatness has been usually ascribed. Understanding the epithet, in its conventional use, as not applied to moral goodness, but to certain regal qualities which men have been trained to admire, it must be admitted that Herod had as good claim to be called “the Great” as many of those to whom that distinction has been given. There is no person who, singly, fills so large a place in the history of the Jews, or whose character has been brought so completely into view. His resolution and indomitable valour are evinced by his whole history; he was liberal even to extravagance in his expenditure; his views were large and penetrating, and his plans comprehensive; he was magnificent in his buildings and public works; and, at the first view, he appears to us as one of those men who might stand forth as the benefactors of mankind.

2. But a closer inspection skews that all this fair appearance was false and hollow. Ambition, glory, and the praise of men, were the motives of all his great acts—to attain these he aimed at objects far beyond the grasp of the dependent sovereign of so small a state. He was obliged, by his lavish expenditure, to lay the most heavy and oppressive burdens upon his people, and to invent any pretext for cutting down the wealthy and the noble, and confiscating their estates. He was a slave to the most furious passions: his natural disposition was severe and unrelenting, and no regard for human suffering formed an obstacle to the least of his designs. His inexorable cruelties against those whom he suspected or feared, excited against him the hatred of all his subjects—and then, his only care was how to make that hatred a source of gain, by new exactions and confiscations. Although a Jew by profession, he was in heart a heathen, and it displeased him that the severe principles of that religion which made more account of righteousness than of glory, precluded his subjects from honoring him as the great ones of the heathen were honored—by statues, temples, games, and offerings. In a word, the good qualities of Herod, real or seeming, were kept bright for holiday show to the Romans; but the bad ones were displayed without reserve to his own people, to his own kindred, and, above all, to those who stood in his way, or whom he accounted his enemies.

3. The leading acts of his reign class themselves so naturally under the heads of jealousy and pride, that it may be well thus to arrange them. Of his jealousy, the prime objects were the members and the adherents of the Asamonean house. He began his reign by a most dreadful persecution of the adherents of the fallen Antigonus; and here policy went along with his hatred, for with his exhausted treasury and lavish expenses, he found it exceedingly convenient to put the more affluent of them to death, and confiscate their estates. The blood which he shed, and the inexorable cruelty which he manifested, in the beginning of his reign, made his person and government hateful to the Jews; and hatred rose to abhorrence when the objects of the public love, the last remains of a noble race, became the victims of his murderous jealousy.

4. The old Hyreanus, it will be remembered, had been exiled to Babylonia, where he was treated with much consideration, not only by the large body of influential Jews in that quarter, but by the Parthian government, Jealous of the place which the harmless old man occupied in the affection and respect of the Jewish people, Herod decoyed him to Jerusalem, and, after treating him for a time with apparent attention and deference, caused him, at a convenient season, to be slain (b.c. 31). The enormity of this deed is unutterable, when we consider what Hyrcanus had been to Herod and to his father Antipater.

5. The next object of Herod’s jealousy was a boy, the grandson of Hyrcanus, and brother of Mariamne. This child was now the lineal representative of the Asamonean house, and, as such, was hateful to Herod; but his life and welfare seemed sufficiently guarded by his relationship to Mariamne. The boy grew up into a youth of wonderful beauty; and the hearts of the Jews were fixed upon him, as the last of the glorious race of the Maccabees. His of right was the high-priesthood, which Herod had bestowed upon an obscure priest of the name of Ananel; but perceiving, at length, that it was no longer safe to withhold the pontificate from him, the king removed Ananel, and gave his place to Aristobulus, then but seventeen years of age. When he first appeared in the gorgeous robes of his office, at the Feast of Tabernacles, the assembled people could not restrain a burst of admiration and delight: and that testimony of affection sealed the doom of Aristobulus. Very soon after, he was drowned, by alleged “accident,” while bathing at Jericho; but the whole nation knew that the act was Herod’s, and saw through the show of mourning and parade of grief displayed on the occasion.

6. Of his wife, Mariamne, who has been so often named, Herod was dotingly fond; and this he showed in his own peculiar manner, by more than once leaving private orders, when he had occasion to leave Judea, that she should be put to death if he failed to return. This happened to transpire, and gave occasion to jealousy and suspicion on the part of Herod, and to anger and indignation; the part of the high-spirited and virtuous princess. The result was, as usual, death. In the rage of his jealousy and anger, he poured out that life which was the dearest of all to him, and which his groans and tears could not afterwards restore. The death of her mother Alexandra followed soon after. The two sons of Mariamne by Herod himself, also exciting his jealousy and dislike by resting upon their Asamonean descent through her, and making that their ground of claim to the favor of the people, were at length consigned to the same doom, and were, by their father’s order, strangled in the prison-house (b.c. 6). In short, such was his jealous temper, that he spared neither his own family, his friends, nor the noblest, wealthiest, or most powerful of his subjects. It is not wonderful that such conduct procured him the intense hatred of the Jews; and that various plots were laid for his destruction. In such plots a very active part was taken by the Pharisees; but they were all abortive, and only served to increase the distance between the tyrant and his people, and to render the former so suspicious, that the innocent were often cruelly tortured, lest the guilty should escape.

7. The knowledge of how deeply he was disliked by the people, also made him more and more careless of public opinion; and when he supposed that all his enemies were put down, and his power well established, he evinced a marked neglect of the Jewish religion and laws, and as marked a preference of Roman customs and practices. There was, perhaps, policy in this; for he owed everything to the Romans, and had no trust but in their favor. Not being a Levite, or even, by birth a Jew, he did not venture to seize the priesthood. His own policy and that of his successors, was, therefore, to degrade that sacred office, and to render it entirely dependent on his will. From the beginning of his reign to the destruction of the Temple, the hereditary principle of succession to the priesthood was utterly neglected; and the high-priests were set up and removed at pleasure. He destroyed the authority of the Grand Sanhedrim, before which he had formerly been summoned; and he is said to have burned the public genealogies, that no evidence might exist against his claim to be considered an Israelite. In all parts of his kingdom, except Judaea, Herod built temples in the Grecian style of art, set up statues for idolatrous worship, and even dedicated a magnificent theatre and amphitheatre to the celebration of games in honor of Augustus, which, it is known, implied the deification of the person in whose honor the games were celebrated. His ordinary habits were framed after the manners and customs o4 the Romans; and along with the usages, his influence and example failed not to impart the luxuries and vices of that licentious people.

8. To Herod’s pride may be ascribed his buildings and public works. His design to rebuild the Temple in a style and scale of superior grandeur, may certainly be attributed to his wish for the glory of being thought another Solomon, rather than to his piety or zeal. He was likewise sensible of the fact, that there was scarcely any step he could take by which he could so well please and soothe the people he had done so much to exasperate. Accordingly, having obtained their consent, he spent two years in bringing together all the materials for the work, after which the old fabric was pulled down, and the new one begun, in the twentieth year of his reign. For nine or ten years, no less than 18,000 workmen were employed upon it. The sanctuary, or the actual Temple itself, was completed in a year and a-half; and the rest of the pile, with its courts, porticoes, offices, and outer buildings, in eight years more, so as to be fit for the usual services of religion; but the whole was not completed till long after the death of Herod. This Temple is that which Christ and his apostles so often visited, and which is minutely described by Josephus. It seems in many respects to have been a much more magnificent pile than the first Temple, built by Solomon, although it may not have equaled that celebrated structure in its wealth of gold. It was built with hard white stones of vast size; and, rising in all its grandeur from the summit of an eminence, it formed the most conspicuous object in a general view of the city, and excited the admiration of all beholders. The exterior was covered profusely with solid plates and pinnacles of gold; and when the rays of the sun were reflected from it, it shone like a meteor, which the eye could not rest upon. The noble porticoes which surrounded the Temple courts, also claimed no small share of admiring wonder. Incalculable wealth was expended on them; and the refined taste was gratified, by grace of form and proportion, by vast extent, by costliness of materials, and by every variety of beauty and embellishment which art or imagination could devise.

9. Herod also built a magnificent palace for himself, which subsequently became the residence of the Roman procurators at Jerusalem. This, next to the Temple, was considered the finest building in Jerusalem. Many otter great works were undertaken by him, not only in his own dominions, but in foreign cities, with the view of spreading the fame of his magnificence in the Roman empire. In many other cities, the traveller might hear in those days, as he went from place to place, that the city walls, the porticoes, the gymnasiums, the theater, the temple, the bath, the bazaar, the aqueduct, were built by a munificent foreigner, Herod, king of Judea; or else that he had planted the grove, had founded the public games, or had made rich gifts to the city. Although this lavish expenditure upon foreigners was a grievance to the people over whom he ruled, it must be admitted that his own dominion was by no means overlooked. Many new cities were built by him, and old ones restored; bridges, roads, baths, aqueducts, were formed wherever needed, which gave a new aspect to the country under his reign. At Caesarea, which was built by him, he framed by art the safest and most convenient port on all the coast. Among the cities rebuilt by him on an enlarged and beautiful plan, was Samaria, to which he gave the name of Sebaste, in honor of Augustus. All these were great, and in themselves useful ^-works; yet we may gather from the Jewish writings, that the people were but little grateful for them, while they groaned under the exactions by which their cost was defrayed.

10. We have seen that Mark Antony was the original patron of Herod, and that to him chiefly he owed his kingdom. In the conflict that eventually arose between Antony and Octavius, Herod adhered to the cause of the former; but at length, not feeling it his interest to connect his fortunes with those of a man whose infatuations were leading to his inevitable ruin, he made a timely and by no means ungraceful transfer of his allegiance to Octavius. To that person the attentions and services of Herod were very acceptable; and when he became the sole master of the Roman world, under the name of Augustus, he continued to manifest towards him the highest degree of favor and personal esteem. By successive additions, his kingdom was made more extensive than that of any king since Solomon, and embraced not only the whole country from Dan to Beersheba, but as extensive domains beyond the Jordan as had at almost any time belonged to the crown of Israel. Besides this, he was the emperor’s procurator in Syria, and the governor of that important country undertook nothing without his concurrence. We may form some notion of the regard which the emperor had for Herod by the pains which he tool: from time to time to settle the troubles that were constantly arising in his family, and which were as constantly referred to his judgment and decision. The most important incidents, as arising chiefly from the jealousy of Herod’s character, have been mentioned. The last of them which was named, being the execution of his two high-spirited and accomplished sons by Mariamne, took place towards the latter end of his long reign. b.c. 6.

11. The year after was signalized by the birth of John the Baptist—the harbinger of the promised Messiah.

Royal Robes