Acts 12 - Introduction

XII: 1, 2. The historian does not follow Barnabas and Saul in their tour through the districts in Judea, but, leaving them for awhile, introduces a very interesting episode concerning events that were then transpiring in Jerusalem. (1) "Now, about that time, Herod the king stretched forth his hand to afflict certain persons of the Church, (2) and killed James the brother of John with the sword." The persecutions which we have hitherto noticed were conducted by religious partisans in Jerusalem, without any active assistance on the part of the civil authorities. We are now introduced to one in which the reigning prince is the leader, while the old enemies of the truth are working behind the curtain, if at all.

This Herod was a grandson of that Herod by whom the infants of Bethlehem were slaughtered, and a nephew of "Herod the Tetrarch," by whom John the Immerser was beheaded. He grew up in Rome, where he wasted what fortune he had inherited in princely extravagance; but while doing so he acquired an intimacy with Caius Cæsar, afterward the famous Caligula of history. When the latter ascended the throne, at the death of Tiberius, he elevated his friend Agrippa, as this Herod was most usually called, to a kingdom, which was subsequently enlarged by Claudius until it embraced all the territory ruled by his grandfather Herod the Great. He was now in the zenith of his power, and living in the utmost magnificence. Why he undertook this persecution it is difficult to tell, unless he was instigated to it by the old enemies of the Church. This appears most probable from Luke's statement below, that he seized Peter because he saw that the death of James pleased the Jews.