CHAPTER XII.
REIGN OF HEROD THE GREAT.
The Fatal Pond—Joseph’s Secret—Death of Hyrcanus—Fate of Mariamne, her Mother, and her Sons.
And now, for the first time, there reigned in Judea a king who was not of the race of Jacob—a king who had been placed on the throne by a foreign power, and who was chiefly maintained there by foreign influence.
As the cruel and unscrupulous character of their ruler developed itself, the Jews had reason to feel their degradation more deeply, and to long more earnestly for the time, now at hand, when the Deliverer should appear in Zion.
We have seen that Herod had united himself in marriage with Mariamne, the grand-daughter of Hyrcanus, a princess who, in the graces of her person, is said to have excelled all the women of her time, and whose spirit was equal to her beauty. She possessed great influence with Herod, who loved her as ardently as one of his hard and selfish nature could love. Mariamne, and her mother Alexandra, the daughter of Hyrcanus, naturally desired to see Aristobulus, the brother of the one and son of the other, elevated to the high priesthood. The youth, who was only seventeen, was entitled by his birth to the office; and the princesses so earnestly advocated his claims, that Herod deposed the high priest whom he himself had set up, and made Aristobulus high priest in his place.
But no sooner had the tyrant raised the Asmonean prince, than he began to find in him an object of jealousy and fear. Nature had endowed the youthful pontiff, like his sister, with dignity and grace, and the power of winning to himself the warm affections of the people. Herod knew that, in the opinion of many of the Jews, he who bore the priestly office was also entitled to the kingly, and the tyrant resolved to destroy one who might become a dangerous rival to himself. The art with which he accomplished this villainous design makes its atrocity yet darker.
Aristobulus, unsuspicious of treachery, accompanied his brother-in-law, Herod, to a banquet prepared at Jericho. After the feast was concluded, the young high priest was persuaded to join a party in bathing. He entered the pond, which the tyrant had resolved that he never should quit alive. Under pretence of sportive play, attendants, suborned by Herod, held the struggling, gasping youth beneath the water till life was extinct, and then pretended that his death had been occasioned by an unfortunate accident.
Bitter were the lamentations over the fair young prince, and none appeared to mourn his untimely fate more deeply than Herod. Splendid was the funeral which he prepared for his victim; but his hypocrisy blinded no one, and Alexandra, the bereaved mother, silently, in the depths of her bleeding heart, nourished thoughts of revenge.
If Mariamne had ever regarded her husband with feelings of affection, the murder of her innocent brother must have changed them to feelings of horror. For such Herod gave his young wife yet greater cause. On his departure from Judea, 34 b.c., the king left the administration of government and the care of his family to his uncle Joseph. Selfish even in his love, unable to endure the idea that his beautiful queen should ever survive him to be loved by another, Herod charged Joseph, should he himself be cut off on his journey, to put Mariamne to death.