Mark 6:14-29 And king Herod heard of him; (for his name was spread abroad:) and he said, That John the Baptist was risen from the dead… When the evil deed was done, Herod scarcely felt as if he did it. There was his plighted oath, there was Herodias' pressure, there was the excitement of the moment. He seemed forced to do it, and scarcely responsible for doing it. And no doubt, if he ever thought about it after, he shuffled off a large percentage of the responsibility of the guilt upon the shoulders of the others. But when, "in the silent sessions of things past," the image and remembrance of the deed comes up to him, all the helpers and tempters have disappeared, and "it is John whom I beheaded." There is an emphasis in the Greek upon the "I; whom I beheaded." "Herodias tempted me! Herodias' daughter titillated my lust; I fancied that my oath bound me; I could not help doing what would please those who sat at the table. I said all that before I did it. But now, when it is done, they have all disappeared, every one of them to his quarter; and I and the ugly thing are left there together alone. It was I who did it, and nobody besides." And the blackness of the crime presents itself to the startled conscience as it did not in the doing. There are many euphemisms and soft words in which, as in cotton wool, we wrap our evil deeds, and so deceive ourselves as to their hardness and their edge; but when conscience gets hold of them, and they pass out of the realm of fact into the mystical region of remembrance, all the wrap pages and all the apologies and all the soft phrases drop away; and the ugliest, briefest, plainest word is the one by which my conscience describes my own evil. I beheaded him! I, and none else, was the murderer. (A. Maclaren, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And king Herod heard of him; (for his name was spread abroad:) and he said, That John the Baptist was risen from the dead, and therefore mighty works do shew forth themselves in him. |
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