Carson Village, Birmingham, Alabama
A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more. ~ Jeremiah 31:15
Something indescribable happened today! I say ‘indescribable’ because I don’t know what word(s) to use to explain my emotion, other than it was definitely a God Moment!
Most days, I open our blog and check the comments. Most days, the myriad of comments we receive are spam. Occasionally we hear from friends or family who’ve directly commented on a post.
But today was different. Today, one caught my eye as possibly being a legitimate comment from a total stranger! I checked it out before I opened it, and it was! How wonderful that our ramblings could reach out to someone and help revive happy memories from their past!
Saw this and brought back some great memories. I’m the Eagle Scout that did the trail and tombstone improvements at the Coleman Tyler cemetery at Babler Park nearly 30(!) years ago.
The post was from this past September when we were staying at Dr. Edmund A. Babler Memorial State Park in Missouri. I looked at the post, and sure enough, in the post are two pictures. One with the name of the cemetery we visited, and one a picture of the plaque we found there – with the guy’s name on it!
“Coleman-Tyler Cemetery established early 1800s. Trail and tombstone improvements – Jason McAdamis 1991 BSA Eagle Project” Thought I’d help you out since you can hardly read it due to the lighting. : )
Turns out, he’s a CPA for a firm in Missouri! Isn’t that something?!? We’ve always said, we never know who’s reading these posts.
The remainder of our day was pretty anticlimactic. David’s at work. The day is overcast, in fact, actually fairly dark, we didn’t have anything exciting to do. Kinda lent itself to my next Christmas installment.
Scripture tells us that King Herod’s reaction to the Magi’s visit was much less enthusiastic than it should’ve been. Being a practicing Jew, he should’ve been elated to hear about the potential for the Messiah’s appearance, but instead, we read that he was disturbed. If you look the word up in the Lexicon, you’ll find it means “to strike one’s spirit with fear or dread”. Scripture also adds, “and all Jerusalem with him”. This is what commentator Matthew Henry says about these reactions to such great and marvelous news:
From Matthew Henry: He (Herod) could not be a stranger to the prophecies of the Old Testament, concerning the Messiah and his kingdom, and the times fixed for his appearing by Daniel’s weeks; but, having himself reigned so long and so successfully, he began to hope that those promises would forever fail, and that his kingdom would be established and perpetuated in spite of them. What a damp therefore must it needs be upon him, to hear talk of this King being born, now, when the time fixed for his appearing had come! Note, carnal wicked hearts dread nothing so much as the fulfilling of the scriptures.
But though Herod, an Edomite, was troubled, one would have thought Jerusalem should rejoice greatly to hear that her King comes; yet, it seems, all Jerusalem, except the few there that waited for the consolation of Israel, were troubled with Herod, and were apprehensive of I know not what, ill consequences of the birth of this new king, that it would involve them in war, or restrain their lusts; they, for their parts, desired no king but Herod; no, not the Messiah himself. Note: The slavery of sin is foolishly preferred by many to the glorious liberty of the children of God, only because they apprehend some present difficulties attending that necessary revolution of the government in the soul. Herod and Jerusalem were thus troubled, from a mistaken notion that the kingdom of the Messiah would clash and interfere with the secular powers; whereas the star that proclaimed him king plainly intimated that his kingdom was heavenly, and not of this lower world. Note: The reason why the kings of the earth, and the people, oppose the kingdom of Christ, is because they do not know it, but err concerning it.
So, Herod called in the chief priests and teachers of the Law to verify what the Magi told him. And then, in a sinister act of deception, asked the Magi to find the Messiah, and return to tell Herod where He was. NOT so he could worship the Messiah, as he claimed, but so that he could destroy Him. And I think the Magi believed him, otherwise, they wouldn’t have had to be warned in a dream to avoid re-visiting Herod.
And then, one day (we don’t know how long), Herod realized that the Magi weren’t returning, and he was furious. In a fit of anger, he gave orders to slaughter all the boys in Bethlehem and the surrounding vicinity who were two years old and younger. Easy enough to give such an order, but what of those who had to carry it out? Were these men who enjoy killing? There are such evil men, even today. And what of the suffering of these innocent people? Can you imagine such a scene? No one wants to look upon the evil men are capable of, but it’s why Jesus had to come. Without it, there’d be no reason for salvation. But it’s the kind of thing that makes many question God’s love.
And this too fulfills prophecy. The one listed above from Jeremiah. So what is Ramah? And who is Rachel?
Rachel (Isaac’s wife and considered the ‘mother of the Jews’) died during the birth of Benjamin and was supposedly buried in the town/area of Ramah, which is north of Jerusalem and Bethlehem. I’m guessing the ‘voice’ would be hers from the grave.
What else do we know about King Herod aka Herod the Great? Who was this man who would order such a thing done? I was just going to write a short paragraph about him, but then I got to researching, and . . . well . . . . if you’ve been following our blog for any length of time, you know how that goes. 😊
There are no portraits and no remaining statues that display his features, but this picture seems to be the most popular if you look on-line.
Much (but not all) of the following comes from britanica.com:
In the same way Marc Antony appointed Herod to his position, Julius Caesar had appointed Herod’s father, Antipater, to the position of procurator in 47BC. This appointment came with the privilege of being installed as a Roman citizen and all the perks that came with that privilege. And the citizenship was conferred to all of Herod Antipater’s family and descendants. He died in 43BC. We begin the remainder of the lesson three years later.
In 40 BCE the Parthians (part of ancient Iran) invaded Palestine, civil war broke out, and Herod was forced to flee to Rome. The senate there nominated him king of Judaea and equipped him with an army to make good his claim. In the year 37 BCE, at the age of 36, Herod became the unchallenged ruler of Judaea, a position he was to maintain for 32 years. To further solidify his power, he divorced his first wife, Doris, sent her and his son away from court, and married Mariamne, a Hasmonean princess. Although the union was directed at ending his feud with the Hasmoneans, a priestly family of Jewish leaders, he was deeply in love with Mariamne.
During the conflict between the two triumvirs Octavian and Antony, the heirs to Caesar’s power, Herod supported his friend Antony. He continued to do so even when Antony’s mistress, Cleopatra, the queen of Egypt, used her influence with Antony to gain much of Herod’s best land. After Antony’s final defeat at Actium in 31 BCE, he frankly confessed to the victorious Octavian which side he had taken. Octavian, who had met Herod in Rome, knew that he was the one man to rule Palestine as Rome wanted it ruled and confirmed him king. He also restored to Herod the land Cleopatra had taken.
Herod became the close friend of Augustus’s great minister Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, after whom one of his grandsons and one of his great-grandsons were named. Both the emperor and the minister paid him state visits, and Herod twice again visited Italy. Augustus gave him the oversight of the Cyprus copper mines, with a half share in the profits. He twice increased Herod’s territory, in the years 22 and 20 BCE, so that it came to include not only Palestine but parts of what are now the kingdom of Jordan to the east of the river and southern Lebanon and Syria. He had intended to bestow the Nabataean kingdom on Herod as well, but, by the time that throne fell vacant, Herod’s mental and physical deterioration made it impossible.
Herod endowed his realm with massive fortresses and splendid cities, of which the two greatest were new, and largely pagan, foundations: the port of Caesarea Palaestinae on the coast between Joppa (Jaffa) and Haifa, which was afterward to become the capital of Roman Palestine; and Sebaste on the long-desolate site of ancient Samaria. At Herodium in the Judaean desert Herod built a great palace, which archaeologists in 2007 tentatively identified as the site of his tomb. In Jerusalem he built the fortress of Antonia, portions of which may still be seen beneath the convents on the Via Dolorosa, and a magnificent palace (of which part survives in the citadel). His most grandiose creation was the Temple, which he wholly rebuilt. The great outer court, 35 acres (14 hectares) in extent, is still visible as Al-Ḥaram al-Sharīf. He also embellished foreign cities—Beirut, Damascus, Antioch, Rhodes—and many towns. Herod patronized the Olympic Games, whose president he became. (And that’s a whole ‘nother story in itself! You should look it up sometime! By the way, the Olympics were held every four years in Olympia, Greece and ran from 776BC until 393AD. 1503 years later, in 1896, they began again in Athens, Greece.) In his own kingdom he could not give full rein to his love of magnificence, for fear of offending the Pharisees, the leading faction of Judaism, with whom he was always in conflict because they regarded him as a foreigner. Herod undoubtedly saw himself not merely as the patron of grateful pagans but also as the protector of Jewry outside of Palestine, whose Gentile hosts he did all in his power to conciliate.
Unfortunately, there was a dark and cruel streak in Herod’s character that showed itself increasingly as he grew older. His mental instability, moreover, was fed by the intrigue and deception that went on within his own family. Despite his affection for Mariamne, he was prone to violent attacks of jealousy; his sister Salome (not to be confused with her great-niece, Herodias’s daughter Salome) made good use of his natural suspicions and poisoned his mind against his wife in order to wreck the union. In the end Herod murdered Mariamne, her two sons, her brother, her grandfather, and her mother, a woman of the vilest stamp who had often aided his sister Salome’s schemes. Besides Doris and Mariamne, Herod had eight other wives and had children by six of them. He had 14 children.
His attempts at acting the pious Jew, fell short. The true Jews regarded him as a foreigner and never truly accepted him as their king, as he wanted. But his life didn’t reflect his piety – – while he refused to eat pork (a meat the Jews weren’t allowed), he had no qualms about murder.
In his last years Herod suffered from arteriosclerosis (So says Britannica. That’s hardening of the arteries. How could they possibly know that?). He had to repress a revolt, became involved in a quarrel with his Nabataean neighbors, and finally lost the favor of Augustus. He was in great pain and in mental and physical disorder. He altered his will three times and finally disinherited and killed his firstborn, Antipater. The slaying, shortly before his death, of the infants of Bethlehem was wholly consistent with the disarray into which he had fallen.
Herod died in 4 BC (cf. Matt. 2:19), probably from intestinal cancer.
As a final act of vengeance against his contemptuous subjects, he rounded up leading Jews and commanded that at his death they should be executed. His reasoning was that if there was no mourning for his death, at least there would be mourning at his death. However, upon his death, the order was overruled and the prisoners were released.)
So what can we learn today?
One of the things I learned is that by doing research on people, I realized it makes them more real. Knowing all these things about King Herod teaches me that he was a real person (and not just a name in a “book”), with real God-given gifts, and a life that interacted with others. A person who laughed and cried and feared and all the other emotions and dreams we each have. And knowing some of those he rubbed elbows with – these timeless historical figures like Julius Caesar, Marc Antony and Cleopatra – for some reason, makes the Bible more real as well. Knowing history, putting all the pieces together, lends credence to Scripture. Not that I needed convincing of the Bible’s truth, but many do.
Knowing more about Herod now, how is he different from each of us today? Herod, though an extreme example, lived a life filled with accomplishments to be proud of. He believed in God. He practiced his adopted faith. But he also made excuses for his actions when they went against God’s commandments. He determined which of God’s laws he’d follow and which he wouldn’t. Which ones fit into his personal lifestyle and which did not.
How often do we do the same?