THE CONFLICT BETWEEN JOHN THE BAPTIST AND HEROD: THE REST OF THE STORY
St. John the Baptist was preaching across the Jordan River at Bethany of Peraea, that little strip of land east of the Jordan that belonged to a Galilee. Only later did he came across into Judea and began preaching at Ai. This may have been because of the controversy between him and Herod.
This conflict was somewhat more complicated than the brief summary that is given to us in the Gospels. You will recall that Herod wanted to marry his sister-in-law Herodias, who was the wife of his half-brother Philip. The first part of the problem was that Herodias was not only his half-brother’s wife, but she was also Herod’s half-sister. In fact, she was also Phillip’s half-sister, so neither one of them should have been married to her. This was a double violation of the law, marrying your half-sister and also your brother's wife. This was a real scandal to pious, believing Jewish people and certainly a scandal to someone like Saint John the Baptist who was, after all, preaching repentance.
The other part of the story is something that might have caused far more serious consequences. King Aretas of Nabataea had been in conflict with Galilee which he had invaded a little earlier and burned the city of Sepphoris which was the old capital of the province before Herod named a city after himself and made it the capital. They were rebuilding the city and had made the peace treaty with the daughter of King Aretas, who was a treaty bride married to Herod. At that time women were not accorded full humanity and were used for barter and for treaties. Women were married off to help seal a treaty or in order to gain social status, to step up a notch.
Herod was married to King Aretas's daughter at a time when men only had one wife at a time. Naturally, when Herod wanted to marry Herodias, Aretas's daughter became a bit frightened because she thought “if he wants to marry somebody else, am I going to meet with an accident and die so he can get me out of the way?” After all, Herod’s father, Herod the Great had murdered more than one of his wives. So she fled back to Nabataea to her father’s house.
This was not only a great offense to his daughter and a violation of their treaty, but it shamed the king as well and he was furious. Aretas wanted to invade Galilee again, only the intervention of the Roman governor of Syria stopped him from being able to do this. Otherwise, he would have invaded and certainly John the Baptist was surely aware of this dangerous situation. The matter was very politically delicate and thousands of people could have lost their lives in such an invasion of war.
This must surely have been also on John the Baptist’s mind as he protested this consanguineous marriage which was not only against Jewish law but fraught with other dangers. Thus the whole incident with John the Baptist was much more serious than what we read in Scripture. Herod gets off too easily in the part of this that is recorded by the evangelist. You may very well have respected John the Baptist, even feared him a little as a holy man, but in fact, he may also have been looking for an excuse to dispose of him.
As a footnote, it seems that Herodias actually did love Herod because when he was later sent into exile she voluntarily accompanied him.
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