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Bible Dictionaries
Herod
Hawker's Poor Man's Concordance And Dictionary
or It may be proper, for the better apprehension of the name of Herod to state some short account of the several we meet with in the New Testament. There are several mentioned, but they are different men. Indeed, but for their history being incorporated with the history of our Lord and his apostle, their names would not be worth recording, but their memory might have perished with them.
The first Herod made mention of in holy Scripture, was called Herod the Great. He reigned in Judea at the time of our Lord's birth. (Matthew 2:1) His name, according to the Greek language, signified the glory of the skin. But it became a very unsuitable name for the miserable end he made, according to the historians of his time, for he died of an universal rottenness. He reigned more than thirty years, and by his death, as we read Matthew 2:19, gave opportunity for the return of the Lord Jesus, to depart from Egypt about the third year before we begin the date of Anno Domino. I mention this the more particularly, to guard the reader against the mistake into which some have fallen, in confounding this Herod with the Herod mentioned Acts 12which was his grandson.
The second Herod we meet with in the Bible, is Herod called Philip. (See Mark 6:17 and Luke 3:1) This Herod, as history informs us, was son to the former. And the third Herod went by the name of Antipas. This man was also son of Herod the Great, and brother to Philip. And this was he who, during the life of his brother, had married Herodias, his brother's wife; and John the Baptist faithfully reproving him for the shameful deed, Herod, at the instance of her daughter, whom she had by Philip her first husband, caused John to be beheaded. (See Matthew 14:1-12; Mark 6:14-29)
The fourth Herod we meet with in Scripture, is the one mentioned with such everlasting infamy in the twelfth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. His name was Agrippa, but surnamed Herod; the son of Aristobulus and Mariamne, and grandson to Herod, the Great. So much for the Herods! An awful though short account of such awful characters; while living, a terror to all around them, and when dead, lamented by none!
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Hawker, Robert D.D. Entry for 'Herod'. Hawker's Poor Man's Concordance and Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/pmd/h/herod.html. London. 1828.
