Verse 7
7. Promised with an oath To reward the graceful dancer was customary; but Herod wills to reward royally. Calmet mentions a Shah Abbas, who promised to a dancer, during a drunken carouse, the revenues of a province. After his recovery, at the instance of his vizier, he broke his promise and gave her a present of two hundred pounds. Salome, doubtless, might have preferred half the kingdom, but her mother’s will preferred revenge to dominion. Perhaps she feared that Herod, in sober moments, would break his oath. She seems by her language to be in a hurry to have the present while the revel is on: “Give me here” the head. And the deed seems to have been perpetrated with an impatient haste, perhaps in the dead hour of night, with no uncommon mixture of revelry and slaughter.
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