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THE ARREST OF JOHN

Luke 3:19–20

So then, urging the people with many other pleas, John preached the gospel to them. But, when Herod the tetrarch was rebuked by him concerning the matter of Herodias, his brother’s wife, and concerning all the other wicked things he had done, he added this also to them all – he shut up John in prison.

JOHN was so plain and blunt a preacher of righteousness that he was bound to run into trouble. In the end Herod arrested him. The Jewish historian Josephus says that the reason for the arrest was that Herod ‘feared lest the great influence John had over the people might put it in his power and inclination to raise a rebellion; for they seemed ready to do anything he should advise’. That is no doubt true but the New Testament writers give a much more personal and immediate cause. Herod Antipas had married Herodias and John rebuked him for it.

The relationships involved in this marriage are extremely complicated. Herod the Great was a much-married man. Herod Antipas, who married Herodias and who arrested John, was the son of Herod the Great by a woman called Malthake. Herodias herself was the daughter of Aristobulus, who was the son of Herod the Great by Mariamne, commonly called the Hasmonean. As we have seen, Herod had divided up his realm between Archelaus, Herod Antipas and Herod Philip. He had another son, also called Herod, who was his son by another Mariamne, the daughter of a high priest. This Herod had no share in his father’s realms, and lived as a private citizen in Rome; he married Herodias. He was in fact her half-uncle, because her father, Aristobulus, and he were both sons of Herod by different wives. Herod Antipas, on a visit to Rome, seduced her from his half-brother and married her. She was at one and the same time his sister-in-law, because she was married to his half-brother, and his niece because she was the daughter of Aristobulus, another half-brother.

The whole proceeding was utterly revolting to Jewish opinion and quite contrary to Jewish law, and indeed improper by any standards. It was a dangerous thing to rebuke a tyrant, but John did so. The result was that he was arrested and imprisoned in the dungeon castle of Machaerus on the shores of the Dead Sea. There could be no greater cruelty than to take this child of the desert and shut him up in a dungeon cell. Ultimately he was beheaded to gratify the resentment of Herodias (Matthew 14:5–12; Mark 6:17–29).

It is always dangerous to speak the truth; and yet although anyone who sides with the truth may be imprisoned or even executed, in the final count that person is the victor. Once the Earl of Morton, who was regent of Scotland, threatened Andrew Melville, the reformer. ‘There will never,’ he said menacingly, ‘be quietness in this country till half a dozen of you be hanged or banished.’ Melville answered him, ‘Tush! sir, threaten not your courtiers in that fashion. It is the same to me whether I rot in the air or in the ground . . . God be glorified, it will not lie in your power to hang nor exile his truth.’ Plato once said that the wise man will always choose to suffer wrong rather than to do wrong. We need only ask ourselves whether in the last analysis and at the final judgment we would prefer to be Herod Antipas or John the Baptist.