TRANSLATION MATTHEW 14:1

At that time Herod the Tetrarch heard of the gossip about Jesus, and he told his servants, “This is John the Dipper: he has been raised from the dead. For that reason, powers are at work in him.” For Herod had laid hold on John and imprisoned him on account of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, for John was telling him,”It is not lawful for you to have her.” He wanted to kill John, but he was afraid of the mass of people, who took him for a prophet.

Now on Herod’s birthday the daughter of Herodias danced before his guests and pleased Herod, so that he promised with an oath to give her whatever she asked. “Give me,” she said, at her mother’s bidding, “here, on a dish, the head of John the Dipper!”

The king was uneasy but because of his oath and the banquet guests he ordered it to be allowed, and sent and had John beheaded in prison. His head was taken and given to the girl and she took it to her mother. And his pupils came and took his body and buried it. And they went and told Jesus.

As in Mark, and to some degree Luke, the event of John’s murder is associated with the miraculous feeding of 5000 men in the desert. For Mark and Matthew the connection is the contrast between the false ruler who (almost literally) consumes his people and the true ruler who feeds them.

As usual, Matthew abbreviates his source material in Mark, but still give the event some prominence. He uses here the same laconic style in which he narrates the miracles of Jesus. Herod is depicted as superstitious, corrupt and brutal. Although Mark gives him credit for some genuine respect for John, Matthew. attributes his hesitation to kill John, to political calculation.

Nothing much is done to characterise the dancer except the beautifully worded sentence, in which she asks for the head, which mimes her repetition of her mother’s command.

Matthew paints the corrupt court without comment. He assumes his readers will know that Herod divorced his first wife to marry Herodias who had left Philip his brother. The moment when the king orders and man to be killed rather than look an idiot in the eyes of his noble friends is a terrible measure of the court’s corruption. This is the almost superhuman injustice with which ordinary people are faced in their lives. That is why good news can only come with acts of almost superhuman justice, as Jesus shows in the next story.

Herod the Tetrarch, then, like Herod the Great at the time of Jesus’ birth, represents one of the poles of Matthew’s magical realism.