Jesus Christ at the Trial of Herod

The tetrarch of Galilee, son of Herod the Great, Herod Antipas, before whom the Lamb of God now had to appear for trial, was the very despot who, to please his lawless wife Herodias, had taken the life of John the Baptist. Cruelty and inhumanity were not, strictly speaking, native to Antipas’s character, but a bent toward sensual pleasure, together with a weakness of will and heart, had more than once driven him to acts of cruelty. The shameless Herodias still held Antipas’s heart in her grip and ruled it together with his kingdom; but she was not in Jerusalem now. She, in any case, had no reason to take a personal interest in the present matter, except out of mere curiosity.

For Antipas, the appearance of Jesus Christ in his palace was as pleasant as it was unexpected. He knew the Lord only by rumor: he had heard a great deal about His miracles; he had heard, no doubt, something of His teaching too—but he had no wish at all to become a hearer of Jesus; he only wanted to see some miracle. Herod’s earlier notion (Mt 14:1-2; Lk 9:7-9)—that John the Baptist, whom he had put to death, had risen again in Jesus Christ—no longer troubled the voluptuary now; distraction and amusements had driven from his mind a thought that might have done his conscience some good.

But it was, no doubt, wearisome for the chief priests to go from one tribunal to another, and without any definite hope besides. Herod, for all his profession of the Jewish religion, had no zeal for the Sanhedrin, made up as it largely was of Pharisees—a sect exceedingly demanding, backed by the people, unable to bear foreign rule, and therefore suspect to Herod, whose family, of Idumean origin, had risen and maintained itself through intrigue at the court of the Caesars. He was better disposed toward the sect of the Sadducees, who also carried great weight in the Sanhedrin, and shared their opinions, though not so far as to follow Sadducean doctrine in everything. Herod, too, of course, like Pilate, knew that the chief priests were persecuting the Prophet of Galilee for purely personal reasons. None of this gave the Sanhedrin much ground for hope.

Yet there was no particular reason to despair of success at Herod’s tribunal either. As a ruler of the Jewish religion, he was expected, at the very least, to show a hypocritical respect for the supreme sacred tribunal of the Jews, and some pretense of concern over the breaking of Jewish laws of which Jesus Christ was accused—a charge that meant nothing at all to the pagan Pilate. And if, as we have seen, the Pharisees had already managed to persuade the Herodians to act in concert with them against Jesus Christ, then in the present case one could rely on their cooperation with even greater confidence.

Pilate’s messengers no doubt explained to Herod what the matter was, and why the Roman judge had not pronounced sentence on Jesus Christ but had sent Him on to the ruler of Galilee: namely, that the Accused, while in Judea, had done nothing deserving death, and that it now remained for Herod to consider whether his own subject had done anything of the sort in Galilee, as the accusers claimed.

But Herod had no thought of examining the case, whose triviality in the civil sense was as obvious to him as it was to Pilate. Paying no attention to Jesus’s exalted accusers, he was visibly glad to see before him at last the Prophet everyone praised, whom he had so long and so eagerly wished to see (Lk 23:8). «Now—the pampered despot thought—now the Prisoner, under threat of torment and death, this Wonder-worker, will unfold before me every marvel of His power or His art, to win my favor.» And a flood of questions at once poured from the curious tetrarch’s lips… The evangelist does not say what he asked, but that his many words did not touch the case itself is shown already by the Lord’s silence, and by the childish curiosity that possessed Herod. Most likely this curiosity turned upon the Lord’s past miracles, and perhaps even the miraculous circumstances of His own life—for instance, the voices from heaven, and the like. The Lord did not answer a single word; He did not even give the appearance of being ready to satisfy the tetrarch’s wish to see some miracle from Him.

The Son of Man appears here too in the same majesty in which we see Him at the beginning of His ministry, when, tempted in the wilderness, He spurned with contempt Satan’s offer to use the gift of miracles for His own personal advantage. There is no doubt that Herod, had he seen some miracle, would have delivered the Wonder-worker from the danger threatening Him; but to work miracles to please Herod and his courtiers would have meant debasing the Holy Spirit, by whose power they were wrought—casting what is holy before dogs…

Among the Lord’s judges, only Pilate, it seems, was at all disposed to value the Prisoner’s lofty feelings and conduct. Herod, unacquainted with true greatness, grew angry when his curiosity went unsatisfied. The chief priests noticed this and at once, seizing the opportunity, began to slander Jesus Christ, arguing that, as a man defiant of authority and an enemy of the people’s peace, He had long deserved death. The turbulent temper of the Galileans, Herod’s own subjects, lent credibility to the dangers they now foretold from Jesus Christ; and the Lord’s present silence, to malicious tongues, served as a clear example of His supposed defiance of authority.

But Herod, for all his vexation at his disappointed hope of seeing a miracle, was not inclined to believe the Pharisees’ slanders. In all likelihood he took the Lord’s silence as an admission of His inability to work a miracle worth noticing. Even before, Herod had scarcely believed from the heart the reports of Jesus Christ’s miracles, ascribing them, perhaps, to some secret art; but, being a man without firm principles, he wavered in his opinion and thought the art at least worth attention. Now, fully convinced that the Prisoner before him would have worked a miracle for his sake if He could, Herod took Him for a mediocre charlatan, who had gained a reputation as a Wonder-worker among the common people, but was forced into silence in the presence of enlightened courtiers; who, dazzled by his own successes, seeing the people’s readiness to acknowledge Him as a great man, had imagined Himself the Messiah, though without any definite aims; a man of low birth, without learning or military talent, with but one passion—teaching the people—and thus not in the least dangerous to the government. «Such men—Herod thought—deserve not death, but ridicule,» and he himself was the first to begin mocking the Lord. The crowd of courtiers at once joined their master. From every side flew sharp jibes, biting taunts, and coarse jests. The Son of Man was mocked and derided as only the righteous can be mocked at a court like that of Antipas.

To crown all the mockery, Herod ordered Jesus Christ dressed in a long, white, gleaming robe. Such was the dress, at Rome, of victorious generals, and of all who were seeking some office from the people. So, thought the mocking despot, ought He too to be dressed who had had the folly to call Himself—though without any particular design or far-reaching consequence—King of the Jews.

In this same robe Jesus Christ was sent back for trial to Pilate. In granting Him His freedom, Herod probably did not wish to provoke the chief priests; at the same time, by a like piece of cunning, he thought to repay Pilate’s courtesy, and to show that he no longer counted him an enemy. For from this time, as St. Luke observes, Herod and Pilate became friends again, as they had been before. A lawful pretext for returning the Prisoner to the Jewish procurator’s tribunal, if a pretext was needed, might be found in the fact that Jesus Christ, though He had spent the greater part of His life in Galilee, had been born, and enrolled in the census, in Judea, whose governance belonged to Pilate.

The sun was already high; the three examinations, and the passing from one tribunal to another, had taken up so much time that the chief priests could scarcely hope to finish their business that same day. But to put it off to another time would have meant, almost, abandoning it altogether. With time, circumstances might dispose still further in favor of the Prisoner, whom the procurator already favored as it was. Above all, they had to fear the people, who, learning of the fate awaiting the great Prophet, might easily rise up against the Sanhedrin. And so the elders, with a patience unusual for them, followed Jesus Christ once more to Pilate’s praetorium, having gained but one consolation—that Herod had mocked the Lord—but with nothing definite in view beyond their own stubbornness.