Matthew 14:8 - Exposition

And she, being before instructed; being put forward (Revised Version); προβιβασθεῖσα ( Acts 19:33 , Received Text; Deuteronomy 6:7 , LXX .). The word implies that the girl herself would not have thought of it, and perhaps that she had at first some little reluctance. But if so, it was soon over, for she came back "in haste" (Mark). Of her mother. St. Mark explains that she left the room to ask her mother. Said, Give me. This is the gift I want. Here . And evidently at once. The word excludes the possibility of the feast being in Tiberias, if John was slain at Machaerus, as the passage in Josephus states (cf. Matthew 3:1 , note). There is no very great difficulty in supposing the chief men of Galilee, etc. (Mark), to have gone as far as Machaerus to pay their respects to Herod and to partake of the feast, but whether the statement in Josephus is accurate, and how, if it be so, it is to be reconciled with the preceding statement that Machaerus belonged to Aretas, are questions not easily answered (see Schurer, I. 2.26). John Baptist's head in a charger; in a charger the head of John the Baptist (Revised Version). She defines here still more closely ( ὧδε ἐπὶ πίνακι ), and then states her request. On the form of her demand for John's death, Chrysostom says that she wished to see his tongue lying there silent, for she did not merely long to be freed from his reproaches, but to insult and jeer him ( ἐπιβῆναι καὶ ἐπιτωθάσαι κειμένᾳ ) . Charger. A wooden trencher.