When John confronted Herod the tetrarch because of Herodias, his brother’s wife,
and because of all the other evil things he had done, Herod added one more thing
to the rest: he locked up John in prison.
(Matt. 4:12, Luke 3:19-20)
Luke 3:1 tells us that when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod was tetrach of Galilee, and his brother, Philip, was tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis. A tetrarch was ruler of a divided area of a country, a title akin to prince. When Herod the Great died, the title of king went to his son, Archelaus. Two other sons, Herod Antipas and Philip, were made tetrarchs, each assigned to rule over a different area of the country. Herod Antipas ruled the southern end of the country, while his brother, Philip was assigned to the northern portion.
Philip was married to Herodias, while Herod was married to the daughter of the Nabatean king, Aretas IV. The marriage most likely was engineered by Augustus, who was known for arranging intermarriages between various rulers to ensure peace in the empire between the Israelites and Arabs.
While on his way to Rome around C.E. 29, Herod stopped to visit his brother, Philip, where he fell in love with Philip’s wife, Herodias, who coincidentally, was also his niece. Herodias agreed to marry Herod, provided he divorced his first wife. The divorce, of course, terminated the peace, and Aretas later retaliated against Herod and defeated him.
Of “…the other evil things he (Herod) had done…” alluded to by Luke, one incident would have been the massacre of the Jewish babies in and around Bethlehem following the visit of the Magi after Jesus’ birth.
Herod’s reign was one of violence. When he was approaching death, realizing that the people disliked him, he ordered all notable Jews from around the nation to be rounded up and imprisoned. He would have his sister, Salome, and her husband, Alexas, murder them all at the moment of his death, so that there would be national mourning instead of a celebration. Salome and Alexas never carried out Herod’s wishes.
When Herod married Herodias, John the Baptist criticized him for it. Leviticus 18:16 and 20:21 forbad a man to marry his brother’s wife or have sexual relations with her. There was an exception to this law, called levirate marriage. Deuteronomy 25:5 required that if a brother died without a son, another brother was to marry his widow. The first son of such a union would carry on the name of the dead brother, and so continue his line. Since Philip was still alive, levirate marriage did not apply, so Herod could not legally marry Herodias.
To further complicate matters, Herod was Herodias’ half-uncle. Her father, Aristobulus and Herod were both sons of Herod the Great by different wives. So John challenged the marriage. This so angered Herod that he had John thrown into prison.
The Pharisees heard that Jesus was baptizing and gaining more disciples than
John. In fact, it was not Jesus who was baptizing, but the disciples. When Jesus
heard what they were saying, and when He heard that John had been put into
prison, He left Judea and returned to Galilee.
(John 4:1-3)
Scholars disagree on whether John’s ministry ended before Jesus’ ministry began. According to Matthew 4:12 and 17, Jesus began preaching after John’s imprisonment. Further, Peter’s speech recorded in Acts 10:38-38 has been interpreted to indicate that Jesus’ ministry didn’t begin until John was imprisoned. In contrast to the author of Acts, John’s gospel appears to indicate that both John and Jesus were ministering at the same time, even to the point, as we read previously, that John’s disciples were concerned that Jesus was drawing people away from John.
The key to the differences between the authors may be nothing more or less than a matter of semantics. John records that Jesus was baptizing at the same time John was, where Matthew and Acts record that Jesus began preaching only after John was put into prison. We find another small difference with respect to whether or not Jesus actually was baptizing people Himself. John 3:26 indicates that John the Baptist’s disciples reported to John that Jesus was baptizing, while the author of the gospel writes in 4:2 that Jesus did not do any baptizing Himself, but the work was performed by Jesus’ disciples. John appears to be clarifying and correcting what his disciples previously had told him, or more likely, correcting the rumor the Pharisees had told them.
This was not the first time someone had come along whom the people claimed was the Messiah; still, the Pharisees had to investigate, to make sure that this one wasn’t going to make an attempt to organize and to bring about political conflict. Jesus wasn’t yet ready to clash with them, so he left Judea and headed northward toward Galilee.
Israel at the time was divided three ways. The most northern section was Galilee, while in the south was the area known as Judea. Between the two was Samaria. There was a great deal of conflict between the Samaritan people and the rest of the nation. Even though the Samaritans were Jewish, they were outcasts–rejected by polite Jewish society–so much so that most people, in order to avoid any dealings with the Samaritans, when they needed to travel between Galilee and Judea, crossed the Jordan and took a route that was twice as long to go from one to the other. Jesus chose the shorter route.
What brought about the Samaritan rejection is this. Around 720 B.C.E. the Assyrians invaded Samaria and carried away most of the population back to Media. The people never came back, and over time, they came to be known as the ten lost tribes of Israel. The people who were left most likely had found places to hide out and avoid capture. The Assyrians had a habit of taking people from the various nations they conquered, splitting them up so that they couldn’t reorganize and rebel, and mixing them up with other nations’ peoples. Into Samaritan lands, the Assyrians pushed these various deported peoples, who brought with them their own religions and cultures. Over time, the remnant Samaritans began to intermarry with the foreigners. To highlight what the removal meant to the remaining Samaritans, we must remember that all their rabbis and religious leaders were captured–all of the symbols and rituals of the people were taken away. Eventually, the people lost most of what had been remembered of the Law and Jewish society.
At some point the Assyrian king sent an Israelite priest back to the area to instruct the people in proper worship, but the people failed to live up to the code set down by him. Further, one of the greatest of crimes a Jewish person could commit was to marry a Gentile. To do so was to commit racial pollution and was considered unforgivable. So, not only had the Samaritans failed to follow the code laid down by the priest, they had intermarried.
The rift was further exacerbated after the return from the Babylonian captivity. In the same way that the Assyrians had captured the northern section of Israel, around 540 B.C.E. the Babylonians invaded the southern section and hauled the people off to Babylon, after they destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem. Eventually the Babylonians allowed the people to return, but when the Samaritans offered to help in the rebuilding of the Temple they were rebuffed, and the rift became permanent.
By the time of Jesus’ sojourn, the Samaritans were considered the dregs of Israelite society. They didn’t adhere to the whole of the Jewish Law, and they married Gentiles. No self-respecting Israelite would have anything to do with them. But it would be here, in Samaria, among the lowest of the low, that Jesus would begin His ministry in earnest.
This ends our study for today.
Points to Ponder