And All of Jerusalem with Him

And All of Jerusalem with Him.  “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,” said King Henry in Shakespeare’s play, Henry IV, Part 2 (Act III, scene 1), denoting the relentless heaviness of leadership. For the leader, there are no small decisions and no small sins. King Herod, also known as Herod the Great for his architectural projects, especially the beautification of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, took the pressure of leadership to negative extremes. The weight of his crown drove him to paranoia. He distrusted everyone, especially his family. A saying about Herod the Great, attributed to Caesar Augustus, captured the warp that Herod took from bearing (and abusing) the weight of kingship, “It is better to be Herod’s pig than Herod’s son.” Herod was a supposed Jew (although he was really an Edomite), therefore a pig would have been unlawful (but not unthinkable) for him to eat. Yet Herod infamously killed several of his sons for suspected conspiracy. This sharp joke probably fueled Herod’s mania.

In Christ’s birth narrative, Herod the Great’s mania was on full display. As a false king, he most feared exposure. The fact that his failed assassination attempt on Jesus in Bethlehem did not make it into secular historians’ pages only goes to show how common assassination attempts were for Herod, no need to report the small ones! But a biblical detail within Herod’s massacre that bracketed the entire book of Matthew showed how Jerusalem resembled its mad king. Good, bad, or indifferent, Jerusalem resembled its representative head.

Herod was shaken when the Magi arrived at Jerusalem without forewarning, saying, “Where is he who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him” (Matt. 2:2). “When Herod heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him” (Matt. 2:3). While it seems unlikely that the entire city interpreted the wise men’s caravan as sinister, since Jerusalem sat along a normal trade route, it seems entirely plausible that the entire city had seen and grieved times when their king became disturbed. They mirrored his mood. The same city had a similar response when Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey. “When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up, saying, ‘Who is this?’” (Mt. 21:10).