Mark 6:14-29
“Power does not corrupt,” said John Steinbeck. “Fear corrupts… perhaps the fear of a loss of power.” That seems to be the story of Herod Antipas, at least as he is portrayed in the Gospel of Mark. Because of his fear of losing face, Herod Antipas has gone down in history not as the king who built the beautiful city of Tiberias or who rebuilt the important trade city of Sepphoris, but as the villain who executed John the Baptist and had his head served up on a platter.
Mark implies that it was really Herodias, Antipas’ wife, who was responsible for John’s death. As Mark tells the story, she is the one who pressured Antipas into arresting John the Baptist in the first place, and she is clearly the one who tells her daughter, Salome, to ask for John’s head on a platter as a reward for her enticing dancing.
John had been preaching and baptizing, calling people to a change of life, but he had also been talking about God’s judgment on the sins of the nation. In that vein, John had been especially vocal in publicly condemning Herodias and Herod for divorcing their spouses in order to marry each other, a sin that John found particularly egregious because Herodias’s first husband was Antipas’ half-brother, Philip, the tetrarch of the large territory to the north and west of Galilee. And because the wife Antipas was divorcing was a princess of an important kingdom to the south, this whole situation created more than a little political instability in the region.
That political instability erupted into a nasty little border war. In order to marry Herodias, Antipas divorced his first wife, Phasa-el, the daughter of Aretas, the king of Nabatea, which led to a bloody territorial war which proved disastrous for Antipas and his sovereignty in Galilee. As the war began to get out of hand, the Roman Emperor Tiberius sent Roman troops marching in to reestablish the peace.
Blood had been spilled. People had died. Regional political balances had been upset.
The ancient Jewish historian Josephus also records the beheading of John in his Antiquities of the Jews. He reports the beheading in a straightforward recital of historic events. There is no cunning wife or beguiling daughter. In his account, the unjust arrest and beheading of John is described as a purely political expedient to silence a persistent critic.
Some tend to read the execution of John the Baptist in Mark as a kind of morality tale, an abbreviated historical novella about a morally compromised aristocracy, one that won’t hesitate to imprison or even murder its critics. But Mark is also telling us a cautionary political story. We just don’t hear all the political nuances because we don’t know the history of all the people in the story, a history that would have been very familiar to Mark’s original readers.
The Jews of Palestine had no fondness or real loyalty to the Herodian dynasty. Herod the Great called himself a Jewish king, but he was not really Jewish. He was an Edomite who had begun his career as a brutal enforcer in the Hasmonean dynasty. The Hasmoneans had defeated the Greek Seleucid colonizers in the Maccabean revolt and, as a result, were much loved. For a while. But they became Hellenized, adopting the ways of their former Greek overlords and more or less abandoning their Jewish ways, laws and customs.
Herod the Great, who was pretty much the equivalent of a mafia boss, rose to power through a combination of brutal force and astute politics. His father, Antipater the Idumean, was on good terms with Julius Caesar, and Herod, himself, cultivated a friendship with Mark Antony who convinced the Roman Senate that he would be a good choice as a client king to keep the unruly region of Judea under control.
Herod had nine wives and at least 10 children. In his will, he divided his kingdom into four parts and arranged for three of his sons to govern in a tetrarchy with one of the sons, Archelaus, being given a double portion. Antipas was given control of Galilee and Perea.
One of the ways that the Herodian dynasty preserved its power and perpetuated its authority was through intermarriage that bordered on incest, and Herodias was a perfect example of this.
Herodias was the granddaughter of Herod the Great. Her father was Aristobulus, Herod’s son by Mariamne I, who was the last descendant of the Hasmonean dynasty. After executing her father, Aristobulus, Herod the Great arranged for Herodias to marry Herod II, sometimes known as Herod Philip or Philip the Tetrarch. Herodias and Philip had one child, a daughter named Salome. The Hasmonean bloodline of Mariamne, Herodias and Salome gave a slight patina of Jewish legitimacy to the Edomite Herodians, but it really wasn’t enough to make serious Jews regard them as genuinely Jewish rulers.
Neither the Hasmonians nor the Herodians paid much attention to the Law or the established rituals of Judaism, and the marriage of Herodias and Antipas was seen by many as an affront to Jewish culture, standards and customs.
It would be easy to write off John the Baptist as a religious zealot who was opposed to divorce and remarriage, but John was more deeply concerned with the political fallout from the marriage of Antipas and Herodias. John was also attacking the dynastic agenda that the marriage represented, and he was particularly upset with their collaboration with Rome.
John was speaking truth to power, the truth of his people and the truth of the God they served. He was, as always, inviting even Herodias and Antipas to a change of life. Mark tells us that Antipas, at least, was beginning to listen: “for Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he protected him. When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed, and yet he liked to listen to him.”
But Herodias flexed her power. She wanted her annoying critic silenced once and for all. And when, in an unguarded public moment Herod told Salome to ask for anything, Herodias saw her chance. She told her daughter to ask for the head of John the Baptist.
Mark tells us that “the king was deeply grieved.” But he was backed into a corner of his own making.
The king was deeply grieved. John’s execution haunted him. Later, when Antipas began to hear reports about Jesus, he couldn’t help but wonder if it was John, raised from the dead.
Nobody likes to hear criticism. Nobody likes to be told where they are failing or falling short. Nobody likes to be told that they are on the wrong side in the everlasting struggle between right and wrong, good and evil.
But if we don’t speak up, nothing gets changed. If we don’t speak up, bad can quickly go to worse.
Those of us who are called to live in the Way of Jesus, who are called to invite the world to change, are also called to speak truth. Even truth to power. Even when we know that power will try to silence us.
1 Peter 3:15 tells us, “Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and respect.” Good words to remember when we stand up and invite the world to change when we tell the world what we see that needs to be changed. Good words to remember when we challenge the world to abandon self-serving lies and rationalizations so the truth can transform them. Gentleness and respect.
“For this I was born,” said Jesus when he stood before Pilate, “and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”
Thoughts Along the Way 