Matthew Chapter 14 verse 1 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerses 1-36. - CHRIST'S POWER TO SUPPLY AND PROTECT AND HEAL, PREFACED BY A STATEMENT OF HEROD'S RELATION TO HIM. Verses 1-12. - Herod's opinion of Jesus, and a parenthetical account of his murder of John the Baptist. Parallel passages: Mark 6:14-29; Luke 9:7-9; Luke 3:19, 20. Verse 1. - At that time; season (Revised Version); Matthew 11:25, note. Herod the tetrarch; i.e. Antipas, youngest son of Herod the Great, and by one of his father's wills named his successor on the throne, but by the last will appointed only tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea. Though not legally king, he sometimes received the title by courtesy (ver. 9; Mark 6:14; cf. Matthew 2:1, note). "In point of character, Antipas was a genuine son of old Herod - sly, ambitious, and luxurious, only not so able as his father." He was deposed by Caligula, A.D. 39, when, at the instance of Herodias, he had gone to Rome to try to obtain the same title of king that had been granted to her brother Agrippa I. (Schurer, I. 2:18, 36). Heard of the fame - heard the report (Revised Version); Matthew 4:24, note - of Jesus.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English ReadersXIV.(1) Herod the tetrarch.--The son of Herod the Great by Malthace. Under his father's will he succeeded to the government of Galilee and Peraea, with the title of Tetrarch, and as ruler of a fourth part of the Roman province of Syria. His first wife was a daughter of Aretas, an Arabian king or chief, named in 2Corinthians 11:32 as king of the Damascenes. Herodias, the wife of his half-brother Philip (not the Tetrarch of Trachonitis, Luke 3:1, but son of Herod the Great by Mariamne, and though wealthy, holding no official position as a ruler), was daughter of Aristobulus, the son whom Herod put to death, and was therefore niece to both her husbands. Prompted partly by passion, partly by ambition, she left Philip, and became the wife of Antipas (Jos. Ant. xviii. 5, ?4). The marriage, at once adulterous and by the Mosaic law doubly incestuous, shocked the conscience of all the stricter Jews. It involved Antipas in a war with the father of the wife whom he had divorced and dismissed, and it was probably in connection with this war that we read of soldiers on actual duty as coming under the teaching of the Baptist in Luke 3:14. The prophetic spirit of the Baptist, the very spirit of Elijah in his dealings with Ahab and Jezebel, made him the spokesman of the general feeling, and so brought him within the range of the vindictive bitterness of the guilty queen.Heard of the fame of Jesus.--The words do not necessarily imply that no tidings had reached him till now. Our Lord's ministry, however, had been at this time at the furthest not longer than a year, and possibly less, and Antipas, residing at Tiberias and surrounded by courtiers, might well be slow to hear of the works and teaching of the Prophet of Nazareth. Possibly, the nobleman of Capernaum (John 4:46), or Manaen the foster-brother of the tetrarch (Acts 13:1), or Chuza his steward (Luke 8:3), may have been among his first informants, as "the servants" (the word is not that used for "slaves") to whom he now communicated his theory as to the reported wonders. . . .