Luke 3:2

Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests, the word of God came unto John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness.

S. Luke passes from the twelfth year of Christ to His thirtieth, when, after the manner of the Hebrews, He began to discharge His Office of Teacher and Redeemer and to preach publicly.

In the fifteenth year. Augustus reigned for fifty-seven years from the death of Julius Caesar, and died on the 19th of August; so that the last year of Augustus was not a complete year, and, consequently, the first of Tiberius only consisted of five months, from August to January, from which the Romans began the year. This Tiberius, having heard wonderful things through Pilate of the miracles and the sanctity of Christ, wished to place Him among the gods, but the senate opposed him, because he had attempted to do it without consulting them (see Commentary on S. Mat 27:24).

Pontius Pilate being governor of Judæa. Archeläus, son of the Infanticide Herod, was exiled by Augustus for his tyrannical conduct in the tenth year of his tetrarchy, supposed to be the fifty-second of Augustus and the twelfth of the life of Christ. Augustus then joined Judæa (that is, the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin) to the province of Syria, the governor of which was at the time Quirinus, or, as S. Luke calls him, Cyrenius, who committed the administration of Judæa to Coponius. Hence the governors of Judæa were called procurators or administrators, though they were really governors. Pilate is here called ήγεμονεύων, ruler or chief; and the Arabic has "in the dominion over Judæa of Pontius Pilate." Pilate was the fifth procurator of Judæa in succession from Coponius; he ruled nine years, in the second of which Christ was baptized, and in the fifth was crucified by him. By the vengeance of God Pilate was exiled by Augustus in the twenty-third year of the reign of the latter.

Herod being tetrarch of Galilee. In the Arabic, "In the dominion of Herod the ruler over the fourth of Galilee, and of Philip, his brother, over the fourth of Ituræa." A tetrarch is one who governs the fourth part of a province or kingdom; called by Theodoret a "Quadruplaris."

Herod the Infanticide, dying five days after the massacre of the innocents, in the second year of Christ left three sons, Archeläus, Herod Antipas, and Philip (for he had put the rest to death one of them, Antipater, at the very time of the massacre of the innocents). These striving together about the succession of their father, Augustus divided the kingdom into four parts, or tetrarchies; he gave Judæa to Archeläus (and after his expulsion to Coponius), Galilee to Herod Antipas, Ituræa and Trachonitis to Philip, and Abilene to Lysanias, a foreigner. These tetrarchies were of great size, and like kingdoms, as Pliny tells us (bk. v. 18); and so Herod Antipas, although he is called a tetrarch by S. Matthew (Mat 14:1), is called a king by S. Mark 6:14. Indeed Herod Agrippa, father and son, the nephew and grand-nephew of Herod Antipas, being son and grand-son of his brother Aristobulus, obtained from Caligula and from Claudius the title of king, as appears from Act 12:1 and Acts 25:24.

And his brother Philip tetrarch of Ituræa and the region of Trachonitis. Ituræa, so called from Iethur or Ithur, the son of Ishmael, is a mountainous and woody district stretching along the base of the Lebanon. Trachon, or Trachonitis, says Pliny (bk. v, ch. 18), is a region beyond Jordan, between Palestine and Cœlesyria, bounded on the east by the Arabian desert, and on the north by Damascus; it was inhabited by half the tribe of Manasseh.

And Lysanias the tetrarch of Abilene. Bede and Adrichomius think that this Lysanias was a fourth son of Herod the Infanticide. But Josephus says that he was the son of another Lysanias, who was the elder son of Ptolemy Minnæus, who ruled in Chalcis close by Mount Lebanon, and that he succeeded him in his kingdom before Herod the Infanticide had been made king of Judæa by the Romans. The elder Lysanias was slain by Antony, the colleague of Augustus and Lepidus in the Triumvirate, at the instigation of Cleopatra, who was scheming to add his kingdom to her own ancestral kingdom of Egypt. This happened thirty years before the birth of Christ. Lysanias the younger tried to reinstate Antigonus in the kingdom of Judæa, to the exclusion of Hyrcanus, whom Herod the Infanticide supported; for this reason Herod was created King of Judæa by the Roman Senate at the instance of Antony and Augustus, both Hyrcanus and Antigonus being excluded, as Josephus relates in bk. 1 Chronicles 11 of his "War;" and the same author, in bk. xix. ch. 4 of his "Antiquities," asserts that all that region was called Lysania, after Lysanias.

Abilene, Abila, Abyla, or Abela, is a celebrated town of Cœlesyria situated by Mount Lebanon, and from it the region of Abilene, or Abilina, takes its name. Abilene borders on Damascus towards the cast, Chalcis on the west, and the Lebanon on the south.

S. Luke is at great pains to enumerate here the chief personages, both secular and ecclesiastic:

(1.) To mark distinctly and palpably the time and year when John, and then Christ, began to preach.

(2.) To shew that the sceptre had now passed from Judah, because Herod and his sons the tetrarchs, and Tiberias and the Romans had become the rulers of Judæa, and that therefore the Messiah, the beginning of whose preaching he relates in this chapter, had come, according to the prophecy of Jacob, Genesis 49:10.

(3.) To give us to understand that Israel, torn in sunder among so many rulers; some infidels, others impious men, had need of the advent of the Messiah, Who should make the people whole and save them.

(4.) Because these personages had much to do with those works of John and of Christ which S. Luke will afterwards relate. Tiberius, as I have said, wished to number Christ among the gods; Pilate crucified Him; Herod Antipas seized upon Herodias the wife of his brother Philip, and being reproved by John, slew him; and he clothed Christ in a white dress and mocked Him; while Annas and Caiaphas persecuted Christ to death, and also persecuted the Apostles after His death.

Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests. There was but one high priest of the Jews, as appears from Josephus and others; why then are there two mentioned here? My answer is that Caiaphas was the high priest, but there were many chief, or leading priests, as is clear from Matt. xxvi. 3, and the chief priests, are repeatedly mentioned in the Passion of Christ, as accusing Him before Pilate, condemning Him, mocking Him, but the most prominent of them were Caiaphas and Annas, the former as being high priest, the latter as father-in-law of Caiaphas, and as having been high priest, and having great influence among the Jews; indeed, Annas had five sons who were high priests after him (Josephus, "Antiquities," bk. xx. ch. 8).

The word (that is, the command) of God came unto John the son of Zacharias. In the fifteenth year of Tiberius, God ordered John the Baptist to preach and baptize; ordered him by an interior inspiration, perhaps too by the voice of an angel.