The career of the monarch was to be but a brief one. Herod Agrippa appeared to have all that the world could give. Riches, honours, power had been freely lavished upon him. In the splendour of his public works he appears to have emulated his grandfather, Herod the Great. Never had the grandeur of his position been more striking than when, on a public occasion, he made an oration to the people. Arrayed in a robe of silver tissue, which glittered in the rays of the rising sun, the display of his magnificence combined with his eloquence to dazzle the admiring throng. With a shout, the people exclaimed, “It is the voice of a god, and not of a man!”
Herod rebuked not such impious flattery—the pride of his heart was gratified; and immediately the angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave not God the glory. He was suddenly seized with agonizing pain, so that he could not refrain from calling out, “I, that ye called a god, am now going to die!” Stricken with a mysterious disease, which seems to have resembled that which destroyed the two great persecutors, Antiochus Epiphanes and Herod the Great, Herod Agrippa was borne to his palace. There, eaten of worms, and enduring exquisite torture, this proud enemy of God and of His Church died in the fifty-fourth year of his age.
His son Agrippa, being but seventeen years old, was deemed too young to succeed to the power and dignity of his father. Three years afterwards, however, the Roman emperor made him king of Chalcis. Judea again sank to the condition of a province, ruled by governors appointed by Rome.
Under Cuspius Fadus, and Tiberius Alexander, Jerusalem appears to have had a short breathing-space of comparative rest. But they were very soon succeeded by Cumanus, and in his time war, tumult, and sedition spread misery over the land. The Jews were discontented with their Roman masters, and their efforts to break from their bondage only drew the cords still tighter.
In one alarming riot in the temple, at the feast of unleavened bread, ten thousand Jews were trodden down and killed, and the feast became a cause of mourning throughout the nation. There were fierce and bloody dissensions between the Samaritans and Jews. Villages were set on fire, and their inhabitants massacred without distinction of age. Bold bands of robbers ravaged the land, and insurrection was rife in all quarters. In the year 52 a.d., Cumanus was removed by the emperor, and Felix was appointed procurator.
The miserable Jews soon discovered the evil qualities of their new master. Felix was mean, avaricious, and cruel. He established his residence in Cesarea; and there, under pretence of administering justice, he practised the grossest extortion. The number of robbers, or those whom he chose to punish under that name, who were crucified by this barbarous governor, was fearfully great.
About this time a horrible system of assassination prevailed in Jerusalem. A band of men who were called Sicarii, bearing daggers concealed about their persons, mingled with crowds in the city, especially at the Jewish festivals. Suddenly they stabbed those whom they regarded as their enemies, but so secretly and treacherously that the murderers usually escaped detection. The first man slain by them was Jonathan the high priest (the office had become annual); and after him so many were thus treacherously assassinated, that men looked upon their neighbours with suspicion, and even in the day-time felt their lives insecure.
An Egyptian false prophet arose, who deluded a great number of the people. He led, according to the historian [Josephus], thirty thousand of them through the wilderness to the Mount of Olives, whence he proposed to attack Jerusalem itself, and drive the Romans from the city. At the approach of Felix with his troops, the deceiver’s courage failed him, and he fled, leaving his miserable followers to the vengeance of the stern procurator.
In the year 62 a.d., Felix was succeeded by Porcius Festus. It was during a visit paid to this procurator by Agrippa, king of Chalcis, the son of Herod Agrippa, that the Apostle Paul, long detained in prison by Felix, pleaded his own cause before an august assembly in Cesarea, and appealed to the judgment-seat of the emperor of Rome.
| CONTEMPORANEOUS EVENTS. | |
|---|---|
| 33-62 a.d. | |
| a.d. | |
| London founded by the Romans | 50 |
| Caractacus carried to Rome | 51 |
| Boadicea defeated | 61 |