21. Chapter 7: His Martyrdom.
CHAPTER 7: HIS MARTYRDOM.
Matthew 14:1-12; Mark 6:14-29; Luke 3:19-20; Luke 9:7-9.
We do not know for certain in what way the Baptist was got into the den of Herod. Den we may call it, because Jesus himself called Herod “that fox.” Josephus says that the Baptist was imprisoned because the tetrarch feared that the crowds attracted by his preaching might be used for revolutionary purposes. Most likely, however, this was only a pretext, and the gospels admit us to the real reason.
Probably John first obtained access to the palace in the way of his calling as a prophet. He was reaching all classes of the people, and he might well be gratified if anything opened the way to the highest circle of society; for a great preacher has a word for the highest as well as the lowest. Herod had a taste for preaching and probably invited the popular prophet to visit him. As the modern phrase would run, John was commanded to preach before the Court. And piquant must have been the contrast, as the son of the desert, dressed in his ascetic garb, trode the marble floors and appeared in the presence of those who were clothed in purple and fine linen. A palace offers a pulpit which a preacher might envy. But it is a perilous place; it has chilled the message on many a preacher’s lips, if it has not converted him into a flatterer and a sycophant. There have been shameful periods, in our own English annals, when the preachers of the Court have not only spared the sins of the great but profited by them, even bishops fawning for promotion at the heels of royal mistresses. On the other hand, when Court preachers have been true to their heavenly Master and dared to speak the truth even to royal ears, they have not infrequently had to risk not only position but life itself; and the Baptist is not the only one, by any means, who has thus lost his head.
Herod the Great—he who ordered the massacre of the babes of Bethlehem—left his dominions to be divided among four of his sons, each of whom was accordingly called a tetrarch; and Antipas—the Herod of the Baptist’s life—thus became ruler of Galilee and Peraea. The father had been a man of the most unbridled passions, as well as of ability and magnificence, and his character was reproduced in this son; though the scope was much curtailed, he being a mere creature of the Roman masters of the country, by whose favor he was maintained in his place. It was the practice of petty rulers in his position to make frequent visits to Rome, where they danced attendance on the Court, waiting for any crumbs of imperial patronage which might come their way; and it was during one such visit to the Eternal City that Herod formed an intrigue with Herodias, the wife of one of his own brothers. It may be mentioned, as an indication of the disgusting state of morals which prevailed in the Herodian family, that both the husband whom this princess was quitting and the paramour whom she was following were her own uncles. Herod’s intention was to divorce his lawful wife, when he reached home, and to marry Herodias; but, being informed beforehand of what was impending, his wife fled, before the approach of the guilty pair, to her father, Aretas, King of Arabia. The relation of Herod and Herodias was, thus, of the grossest kind; and an honest preacher could not obtain access to the royal ear without stigmatizing so great a scandal. John did not go about the bush. Herod expected to hear the silken accents of oratory; but what he heard was a voice like the sound of a trumpet, saying without circumlocution, “It is not lawful for thee to have her.” This was a sound unspeakably disconcerting, which it would never have done to allow inside the palace, and so John was cast into prison; the reason which Josephus gives being perhaps assigned as a pretext, because the real reason could not be avowed.
Although the tetrarch had shut John up in prison he was not, it would appear, incensed against him; for St. Mark’s statement, that he “heard him gladly,” appears to refer to the period of imprisonment. As the prisoner St. Paul had the privilege of preaching to Felix and Festus, Agrippa and Bernice, so, it would seem, John, though a prisoner, appeared before the Court and that again and again. Herod was a clever man; but his ability, being cramped in a position where he had little real power, ran to seed in a passion for novelty and excitement. The Baptist was an original; he was a man of mind, whose ideas were fresh; his appearance was striking and his delivery forcible; and the tetrarch derived from intercourse with him a welcome intellectual stimulation. Religion can be enjoyed in this way; it contains ideas, it is replete with mystery, and it can be preached with eloquence. A man may hear the word gladly, for the sake of the intellectual pleasure it affords and the interest of the preacher’s personality, who has no thought of yielding to it his heart and his will. The same state of mind in Herod was exhibited at a later stage, when he was glad to see Jesus because he expected him to work a miracle. But by that time the star of his destiny was near its setting; and Jesus treated him with lofty disdain. At this early stage, however, there was more in Herod than the insatiable curiosity of a man of pleasure. He feared John, we are told, “knowing that he was a just man and a holy.” There was still a conscience in him. By one nod to a myrmidon to cut him down, when he uttered his uncourtly charge, he might have silenced the prophet; but he let him speak on; perhaps he even liked his faithfulness. Ungodly people sometimes admire a minister the more because he is not afraid of their faces and does not spare their sins. They know it is his duty; and they would despise him if he neglected it through fear of them. Policy is not likely to make a minister faithful, yet it is true that faithfulness is the best policy. And when faithfulness is backed up by character it commands the homage of all who are not utterly corrupt. As Herod listened he felt how awful goodness is, and his conscience consented to the law that it was good. But conscience requires to be not only heard but obeyed; and this was where Herod lost himself, as multitudes do. He went further, indeed, than some. One version, apparently the better authenticated, says that he was much perplexed; another says, more significantly, that he did many things. Perhaps he prayed; perhaps he wept; perhaps he gave up this sin and that; perhaps he did this and that act of clemency or generosity. But one thing he would not do, and it was the one thing needful. All the time he was walking round this great thing in the centre of his life and the many things were only meant to make up for its omission. This is not an unusual position. There is one thing which people know must be done; they will multiply other things, they can do all other things, but this they will not and they cannot do. They hear God’s thunder rolling overhead; they weep and pray; but still the one thing needful remains undone.
Meantime the conscience sadly suffers. Conscience ought to be obeyed instantly, and it is only by prompt obedience that its tone is maintained. But, if the condemning voice of the law is heard continually and assented to, but not obeyed, conscience becomes a mere pulp, in which nothing can take hold; the character is demoralized; and the indulgence of religious feeling and the multiplication of religious acts only make it worse. We can trace the history of the degeneration of Herod’s conscience. When, some time after the Baptist’s murder, the fame of Jesus reached his ears, he was still capable of an access of bewildering terror. “It is John the Baptist,” he exclaimed, “risen from the dead.” But, later, when the Baptist’s Friend was sent to him for trial by Pilate, he had lost all dread and all shame; he behaved at first with the most cynical frivolty, and when the silence of Jesus dislodged him from this attitude he only made the transition to insane arrogance and mockery. His conscience had become seared. And this is the natural history of this faculty. Loyally followed, it is the surest guide to the heights of nobility and serenity, but tampered with, or neglected, it becomes the brand of moral degradation, while at the same time it hides within itself the secret of retributive torment. The Baptist had no cause to apprehend immediate danger from Herod; but behind the tetrarch there stood another figure, whose attitude was ominous. This was Herodias. What Jezebel was to Elijah in the Old Testament Herodias was to the Elijah of the New Testament. She was worse. Elijah escaped from the deadly hate of Jezebel and, as he had prophesied, her bones were devoured by the dogs of Jezreel; but John did not escape the vengeance of his enemy.
It has often been said that women are like the figs of Jeremiah: when good, they are very good, but, when bad, they are very bad.
“For men at most differ as heaven and earth, But women, worst and best, as heaven and hell.” No symptom of the evil age in which the Messiah came to this world was more noteworthy than the character of its women. The Agrippinas and Messalinas of Roman history, with their colossal passions, were the worst index of the ancient world’s decay. And nowhere did this corruption assume worse forms than in Oriental courts, under Roman influence. In Cleopatra, the paramour of Antony, Shakespeare has depicted the type in all its features of mingled attractiveness and abandonment.
Herodias was a woman of this character. She had very good reasons for hating John; because, if Herod put her away, as John advised, where was she to go? For her the enjoyment and glory of life were over for ever. A woman’s hatred is different from a man’s. It sees its purpose straight before it, and no scruple is allowed to stand in its way. Herod, bad man as he was, feared John and reverenced him. Not so Herodias; for her there was no halo round the prophet’s head. Either he must die or she be banished from the sunshine, a disgraced and ruined woman; and she did not hesitate a moment between the alternatives.
Josephus says that the Baptist was imprisoned in Machaerus. This was a castle or palace in the neighborhood of the Dead Sea, that is, far in the south of the country; but Herod’s regular abode was Tiberias, on the Sea of Galilee. It is just possible that Herod sent John to distant Machaerus to be out of harm’s way; for St. Mark says that “Herodias had a quarrel against him, and would have killed him, but Herod . . . . preserved him”; not “observed,” as the common version says; the revised version renders, “kept him safe.”
Even a prison may be a welcome protection from the wrath of an angry woman. But Herodias’ implacable hatred never slept, and at last her opportunity came. Herod was fond of all occasions which afforded an excuse for excitement; and he had borrowed from his Western masters the practice of celebrating his own birthday with elaborate festivities. Machaerus was the palace chosen on this occasion, and there he assembled “the lords, high captains, and chief estates of Galilee.” Herodias, too, was there. Herod, perhaps, had forgotten all about John, but she was thinking of nothing else. The bait of which she made use was her own daughter. Few things in this world are more touching and beautiful than the training of a daughter by a good mother, whose cares and prayers fashion the virgin heart of her child into a sanctuary of all that is pure, modest and holy. But a wicked mother, transfusing into her daughter’s heart the hellish passion and malignity of her own nature, is an awful spectacle.
Dancing is one of those things, innocent in themselves, which often serve the tempter as an inclined plane down which it is easy to get human beings to descend. Historically it has been associated with some scenes of the worst degradation of man and woman. In the corrupt age to which Herod belonged it was much sought after by men like him, and nowhere was it more relished than in Oriental courts. Both men and women practised it in public for a livelihood; and those who distinguished themselves were frequently rewarded by extravagant presents. Many of the dances were lewd in the extreme and appealed to the worst passions of human nature. No doubt the favorable moment was watched for by Herodias, when the tetrarch and his boon companions had reached the stage at which evil passions can be most easily blown into flame. Then the girl was introduced, in her youth and beauty, and executed with bewildering grace the part for which she had been trained. The sight of one so nearly related to himself appearing in the position of a dancing-girl or play-actress ought to have filled Herod with shame and indignation; but the daredevil sauciness and the abandonment of a princess completely carried away the halfintoxicated men, who looked on spellbound and broke out into wild applause; and the tetrarch, entirely losing control of himself, roared out a promise to give her any present she might ask, even to the half of his kingdom.
One Evangelist says that the girl was instructed beforehand what to ask, while another says that she went to consult her mother. No wonder, however, that, even if she had been instructed beforehand, she went to ask when she received such an offer. Half of a kingdom! What might she not have obtained— palaces, jewels, gorgeous apparel—all that a girl’s heart could desire! But that stony face, congealed with hatred and fear, met her hesitation unmoved. “Little fool, you know not what you ask: what would all these things be to you and me, unqueened and outcast, as we may be any day if John the Baptist lives?” So she came back into the hall and said, “Give me here immediately the head of John the Baptist in a charger.” She was still playing the saucy devil-may-care; and it is easy to imagine the roar of laughter and admiration with which the pretty wickedness of this request would be greeted by the tipsy revellers. But Herod did not laugh. He grew pale and trembled; he knew that he had been entrapped. For a moment the fate of John and that of Herodias hung in the balance. Would the manhood and the kinghood in Herod prevail? Would he say, “No; I have been betrayed; no hand shall touch a hair of the head of the man whom I am protecting”? Alas, it was the opposite half of Herod’s self which came forth—the weak, cowardly side. He was swept away by the drunken shouts of his courtiers; he affected to believe that he felt scrupulous about his oath. Perhaps the strongest motive of all was dread of the blood-thirsty Fury by whom the whole scene had been contrived.
Like mother, like daughter. Salome had played her part well. But what a burden was that for the girl to receive and carry away in the charger! Doubtless she kept up her gay and frivolous mood as long as the eyes of others were upon her; but surely her heart quailed when she was out of the lighted hall and alone with the ghastly object. The eyes of that other face, however, did not quail, but flashed with the fire of hell, as they devoured the hated features. When the head of Cicero was brought to Fulvia, the widow of Clodius and the wife of Antony, she drove her hair-pin again and again into the tongue which had denounced the iniquities of both her husbands; and Herodias was capable of doing as much at least.
She remained Herod’s evil genius to the end. The death of the Baptist filled the tetrarch’s subjects with horror; and King Aretas led an army into the country to avenge the dishonor done to his daughter, inflicting on Herod a severe defeat which the people attributed to the wrath of heaven. Herod appealed to the Romans for help; but in the nick of time the emperor died on whose favor he depended. Urged on by the ambition of Herodias he went to Rome, to pay homage to the new emperor and to beg for himself the title of king. But the new emperor, being prejudiced against him, not only refused his request but deprived him of his government altogether. Herod was banished to Lyons, in the south of France, where he and Herodias died miserably.
Nothing is told of the tragedy inside the prison. When the apparition of death confronted John so suddenly, how did he receive it? He was still young, little more than thirty; the pulses of life were strong in him; he had been arrested in the midst of a great work, and much, he must have felt, as every true worker for God and man feels, was yet to be done. Had he still a great doubt, which he was yearning to have solved before leaving the world?
There are few scenes more pathetic than the little company of his disciples gathering at the prison door to take up the poor, mutilated and dishonored trunk. Where did they bury it? It must surely have been in the sand of the desert—fit resting-place for one who had so loved solitude and to whom society had proved so unkind. Into his grave they dropped many a tear of affection; and many a golden hope and glorious dream they buried with their master. Were they thinking that surely Jesus, if he were the Christ, might have prevented this? Were they thinking of the enigma, that it should be possible for a man like Herod to put out of the world a man so good and so beneficent as John? As they turned round from the grave, the heavens looked very blank and the earth very vacant. But a true instinct told them where to go—“They went and told Jesus.” Ah, blessed road, whereon thousands upon thousands have followed them since! It is the right road, whatever be the trouble; but most of all when the waves and billows of doubt are breaking over the mind—when it looks as if Providence had let go the rudder, and as if there were no love at the heart of the universe. When the Son of God appears to have abandoned his own cause, and even to have given occasion to doubt his very existence, then carry the trouble to no one else, but go and tell Jesus.
“God is his own interpreter And he will make it plain.”
Long since has he made plain the martyrdom of the Baptist; for John has accomplished far more by dying than he could ever have done by living. He lives on in the world with an influence ever extending; it is even he who keeps alive the memory of Herod, Herodias and Salome, who murdered him. Whenever truth has to be defended or difficult testimony has to be borne, there his image sheds a welcome inspiration; and because he gave up his life rather than compromise with sin, therefore his voice, crying, “Repent!” still echoes in the hearts of men, and his finger is visible across the centuries, outstretched towards “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.”