Matthew 14:2

2. Said unto his servants Why Herod should thus express himself to his servants, so likely to have been skeptical and dissolute men, seems at first view difficult to say. But one or two apparently accidental allusions elsewhere in the Gospels afford, perhaps, some explanation. We learn from Luke 8:3, that among those who administered to Jesus of their substance was Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward. And again in Acts 13:1, we are told that among other distinguished converts was Manaen, which had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch; that is, was his foster brother. We see then, that as at a later period there were saints in Cesar’s household, so there were also believers in the household of Herod. Through these the solemn reports of the deeds and teachings of Jesus doubtless reached the guilty king. Consequently “he was desirous of seeing him, because he had heard many things of him.” And to such servants he could doubtless express the believing sentiments attributed to him.

This is John the Baptist Herod Antipas did not identify Jesus as the newborn King of the Jews announced to his father’s house by the Magi. That fear had long since been dismissed and forgotten. Nor did he seem distinctly to understand that Jesus claimed Messiahship. Antipas was king by descent from his Herodian paternity, and maternally from the more noble Asmonean line; but how feebly could both these compare with an heirship like that of Jesus from the ancient line of David and Solomon. Herod was Edomite; but purely national was the blood of the family of Nazareth.

Jesus did at last appear before Herod, (Luke 23:6-12;) sent in bonds by Pilate to Herod as the subject of his jurisdiction. Herod was at first interested to see Jesus, in hopes of beholding some display of that miraculous power by which he is at the present time so much perplexed and harrowed in conscience. But when Jesus maintained an impenetrable silence, the irritated Antipas arrayed him in tawdry robes in mockery of his royalty, and remanded him to Pilate. Risen from the dead His conscience seemed to conjure up the murdered John from his grave. Luke adds that the tyrant was “perplexed;” and when it was rumoured that Jesus was the risen John, and one courtier suggested that he was Elias, and another that he was some one of the ancient prophets reappearing, Herod Antipas finishes with: “John have I beheaded, but who is this of whom I hear such things?” These conjectures imply, not a belief in a transmigration of souls, but simply in extraordinary resurrections. The whole account furnishes a vivid picture of a profligate set of men, interrupted in the midst of their riot and wickedness by supernatural rumours and horrors of conscience. A comparison of Mark 8:15, with Matthew 16:6. furnishes reason to suppose that Herod was a Sadducee. For in the one passage the leaven or doctrine of Herod appears to be the same as the leaven of the Sadducees, and Luke tells us (Luke 9:7) that he was “perplexed because it was said of some that John was risen from the dead; and of some that Elias had appeared; and of others that one of the old prophets was risen again.” So thickly did these rumours come that he seems to have given in the point that the murdered John had reappeared from the grave. Though a Sadducee, yet guilt made him a cowardly sort of a believer. So true it is that irreligious men are often tremblingly superstitious. Being unconsoled by the truths of religion, they are exposed to be frightened by any form of horror suggested to the imagination by a guilty conscience. Therefore mighty works The implication is that John had acquired a miracle-working power after rising from the dead. This is a striking incidental confirmation of John 10:41, that John wrought no miracles while living.