Background
Herod I was born in 73B.C. Herod’s grandfather and father, both I called Antipater, were high-ranking officials, his grandfather having apparently served as governor I of Idumea (Edom).
Herod I was born in 73B.C. Herod’s grandfather and father, both I called Antipater, were high-ranking officials, his grandfather having apparently served as governor I of Idumea (Edom).
The highly ambitious Antipater inculcated in his offspring a remorseless drive toward authority and i high position and the need to serve Rome unquestioningly. These lessons were learned well by Herod in particular. His early days as Roman governor of Galilee were marked by his suppression of the nascent anti-Roman Jewish freedom movement. Hezekiah, the most distinguished of its leaders, was summarily executed together with large numbers of the Jewish rebels.
The stringent requirements of Jewish law as regards capital punishment were flagrantly flouted by Herod, and the consequent Jewish outcry led to charges against him on two occasions. He was finally let off without trial through the intervention of the Roman governor of Syria, but not before a distinguished Pharisee sage, Samaias (perhaps Shammai), had castigated the assembled Jewish judges for fearing to bring Herod to trial. This man, he said, would yet visit his wrath upon them.
Herodian rule was marked by bitterness, conflict, and violence from the very outset. Although officially appointed king of Judea in the year 40 BCE through the courtesy of his carefully cultivated (and massively bribed) friend Mark Antony, it took Herod three years and Roman military intervention before he could finally remove the threat posed by Mattathias Antigonus, the last of his Hasmonean opponents, beloved of the mass of the people. In general, it was Herod’s keen sense of maneuver in the dangerous shoals of Roman politics that not only helped him survive, but eventually earned for him rule over almost the entire Land of Israel.
Years of rage ensued, including the destruction of the closest members of his own family — wife, mother-in-law, sons, many other close relations, and others too numerous to mention. The Roman emperor Augustus, no squeamish character himself, reportedly remarked of Herod’s execution of his sons, “I’d rather be Herod’s pig than his son.”
By the same token he made efforts not to flout Jewish tradition publicly, avoiding offensive representations on his coinage and insisting that members of his family marry Jews or spouses converted to Judaism. His assistance in times of famine was notable. The Jews of the Diaspora were equally indebted to him for his intercession with the authorities in cases of anti-Jewish manifestations. Yet Herod engaged in the practice, unforgivable in Jewish eyes, of appointing and demoting high pri¬ests at will, and commenced and concluded his reign with the execution of many respected sages.
The countryside was infested by informers and fear was rampant throughout his lengthy reign. The mention of his “massacre of the innocents” in the New Testament, though possibly anachronistic (he died in 4 BCE), is undoubtedly a throwback to his harsh legacy. The Talmud frequently hurls at him the contemptuous epithet of slave as it recalls his murder of the sages.