One On One: 100 Days With Jesus--ADVENTSample

Herod the Great: A Study in Madness 

In every generation, madmen walk the earth scattering unholy terror like seeds. The year Jesus was born, his name was Herod. Let’s call him, Herod, the wish-I-was-Great. 

His 33-year reign over Israel reads like a clinical study in paranoia. Assassinating at whim, his name sent shivers up the spine of a nation. 

Herod hungered for Jewish respect and tried to bribe them for it. He built them a temple complex that rivaled any wonder of the world. He crafted coliseums, aqueducts, and palaces that marvels Holy Land tourists even today. But Israel despised him for his half-breed lineage, his unbridled ambition, and the river of blood that cascaded off his throne like a waterfall. 

Herod’s shock and awe strategies failed to win the Jewish people’s hearts but won him Rome’s attention. Early in his career, he played a role in the soap opera starring Cleopatra, Marc Antony, and Julius Caesar which unfolded just over the border in Egypt. Rome rewarded Herod’s cut-throat service with the throne of Israel, a country he had no right to rule. 

With the cruelties that served him in war and intrigue, Herod dominated Israel with a bloody fist. Living in the palace was especially dangerous. Herod slaughtered hundreds of ‘disloyal’ family and workers, crushing everyone he said he loved—wives, sons, brothers, grandfathers, friends. No one was safe from Herod’s paranoid genocide—including thousands who resisted his take-over, dozens of the Sanhedrin (like the supreme court), and rabbis and their students who defended God’s law. 

“Evil is on the throne and Israel has no hope,” whispered faithful Jews in Jerusalem. 

When he sensed his own end was near, Herod filled Jericho’s stadium with beloved countrymen, with orders to kill everyone the moment he died—a sure way mourning would go global even if it wasn’t for him. 

If only character had matched his creative genius, Herod would have a respectable place in history. Yet today he’s remembered only as the king who slaughtered babies in search of Jesus. 

But don’t think God is absent from any scene in history run by a madman. He is never more present than in evil’s darkest hour. 

On that night of nights, if Herod had only looked out his palace window—three miles southeast—he couldn’t have missed the star hovering over Bethlehem. He might have also wondered, What’s that light coming from shepherd’s field? — Is that singing? In minutes, he could have walked his way to the manger and found Jesus. 

But he didn’t. Soon after, Herod’s evil caught up with him, poisoning him, body, spirit, and soul. Gangrene ate his innards and his private parts rotted off. As he lay dying, his sanity unraveled like an old sweater. 

Herod, the not so great after all. 

Tomorrow: One on one with the wise men