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King Herod heard about this, for Jesus' name had become well known. Some were saying, "John the Baptist has been raised from the dead, and that is why miraculous powers are at work in him."

And still others claimed, "He is a prophet, like one of the prophets of long ago."

[16] But when Herod heard this, he said, "John, the man I beheaded, has been raised from the dead!"

[17] For Herod himself had given orders to have John arrested, and he had him bound and put in prison. He did this because of Herodias, his brother Philip's wife, whom he had married. [18] For John had been saying to Herod, "It is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife." [19] So Herodias nursed a grudge against John and wanted to kill him. But she was not able to, [20] because Herod feared John and protected him, knowing him to be a righteous and holy man. When Herod heard John, he was greatly puzzled; yet he liked to listen to him.

[21] Finally the opportune time came. On his birthday Herod gave a banquet for his high officials and military commanders and the leading men of Galilee. [22] When the daughter of Herodias came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his dinner guests.

The king said to the girl, "Ask me for anything you want, and I'll give it to you." [23] And he promised her with an oath, "Whatever you ask I will give you, up to half my kingdom."

[25] At once the girl hurried in to the king with the request: "I want you to give me right now the head of John the Baptist on a platter."

[26] The king was greatly distressed, but because of his oaths and his dinner guests, he did not want to refuse her. [27] So he immediately sent an executioner with orders to bring John's head. The man went, beheaded John in the prison, [28] and brought back his head on a platter. He presented it to the girl, and she gave it to her mother. [29] On hearing of this, John's disciples came and took his body and laid it in a tomb.

Harry was small at birth—only 4 pounds 2 ounces, but the doctors said he had a good chance at growing up normal in every way. And he would have if he had gotten some decent care. As it was, however, his mother didn’t feed him often enough, and even though she changed him when he was dirty, she never held him and cuddled him, she didn’t talk to him or sing to him; she just let him lie in his crib all day. Even when he cried, she wouldn’t comfort him. He grew progressively weaker; he kept losing weight; and one day he died. The autopsy showed “Failure to Thrive” syndrome.

Harry was Herod’s conscience, and Herod killed him through neglect. A conscience is like a new infant, in that it needs us to pay attention to it; we need to nurture it and feed it by responding to its cries. If we neglect our conscience, it will fail to thrive, and will eventually shrivel up and die. That’s what Herod did to Harry.

The story of Herod and John the Baptist is not told in chronological order here in Mark, so it can be a bit confusing. Let me try to fill it in for you as the events took place, so you can see the cause and effect connections here.

1. Herod visited his brother Philip and his wife Herodias in Rome. While he was staying in their home, he had an affair with Herodias and persuaded her to leave Philip and marry him (v.17), violating Leviticus 18:16 " 'Do not have sexual relations with your brother's wife; that would dishonor your brother.” (cf. also Leviticus 20:21). Herodiaswas also the daughter of Herod’s half-brother (Aristobulus), and was therefore his niece as well as his former sister-in-law.

2. John the Baptist had access to Herod’s court, and publicly rebuked him for this sin –v.18.

3. This angered Herodias, who wanted revenge by killing John, but Herod wouldn’t let her, because he thought he was a holy man and liked to listen to him. Nonetheless, Herod did have John put in prison at Herodias’ insistence.

4. Herodias got her chance when Herod threw a party for himself on his birthday, and invited lots of prominent leaders. (Here the narrative becomes more chronological.)

a. Herodias’ daughter came in and danced for Herod and pleased him and his guests quite a bit.

b. In an effort to show his pleasure, he offered to give her whatever she wanted (“up to half my kingdom” is a standard phrase meant to express generosity that was not meant literally.)

c. Herodias immediately spotted her opportunity and told her daughter to ask for John the Baptist’s head.

d. Herod didn’t want to kill John, but he had made the offer publicly, and felt he could not renege on it, so he ordered John’s execution

5. Some time later, Herod heard of Jesus rising to prominence, and concluded that He had to be John, raised from the dead.

The main points of this story can be seen through the lenses of the different characters.

Herodias is simply an evil person. She left her husband and married his half brother. She resents John for calling her on her sin; she just doesn’t want to hear it. And she is out for revenge. So she puts her daughter up to dirty dancing for the leaders in hopes that she might have some leverage with Herod. And when the opportunity is presented to her, she doesn’t hesitate to call for John’s head. Her guilt drives her to hatred, and she is going to get rid of the one who (she thinks) makes her feel guilty. She doesn’t understand that she has a conscience, and that that conscience is the gift and tool of God. If we will pay attention to what our conscience is telling us, we’ll usually go in the right direction; if we ignore it, we will wind up in some really bad places, like she did.

Herod and Herodias had a daughter named Salome (we know her name not from Scripture, but from the Jewish historian Josephus who was writing at about that same time.)

She’s the one who comes in and dances at the party. Mark doesn’t describe her dance explicitly, but it doesn’t take much to read between the lines. This is a party for the men: high officials, military commanders, and the leading men of Galilee. They are almost certainly drinking heavily, and “male entertainment” was expected. It was unusual to have a member of a prominent family dance for them, because they would normally have had a professional dancer or prostitute dance at a stag party like that, but Salome did it. We don’t know for sure, but it almost looks like Herodias put her daughter up to it, and Salome was happy to oblige. It seems obvious that this was a very sensual, salacious dance, designed to please the men, and it did.

So Salome is a very sensual young woman, not above doing whatever it took to arouse the men who ogled her, but that’s not the worst of her. When her mother suggests that she ask for the head of John the Baptist, there is no indication that she resisted or was repulsed by this idea. According to Mark, she came up with the idea of presenting the head on a platter on her own. She has completely bought in to her mother’s revenge and her disregard for innocent human life.

Salome doesn’t pay any attention to her conscience, either, if it is still alive at this point.

The two most interesting people in this story are John the Baptist and Herod the tetrarch, and the contrast between these two men is stark

John had been, from the very beginning of his ministry out in the Judean wilderness, a man of strict righteousness. He called the nation of Israel back to radical obedience to God, and baptized those who sincerely repented of their sins. He attacked the Pharisees as a brood of snakes for their hypocrisy. And he warned them that their lives needed to change to prove that they had genuinely repented. He dressed in really rough clothes that were reminiscent of the prophet Elijah (2 Kings 1:8), and was generally the sort of person who didn’t pull any punches. He called a spade a spade, and didn’t mind telling you you were a sinner. He was also a man of tremendous courage, who didn’t care who you were, whether you were a peasant or the tetrarch with the power of life and death over him. He was going to call it as God saw it and had revealed it in the Scriptures of the Old Testament. There wasn’t a lot of gray in John’s life—everything was black or white for him, and I suspect many of us would have been uncomfortable around him.

For example, when God said not to lie, did He mean not at all, or not on big things, or not if you thought you might get caught, or what? John would have said, God meant don’t lie at all. No shading of the truth, no telling the part of the truth that makes you look good, no telling the truth in such a way as to deceive people into believing a lie, etc. Tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

John spoke about hypocrisy, and criticized the Pharisees for pretending to be more spiritual than they really were. I wonder if we had been standing in the crowd that day how we would have felt under that attack. Might we have begun to squirm a bit as he pointed out to them the many ways they tried to deceive people about their spirituality? Would we see any ways that we cover up our own sinfulness and degradation? One of the things I had to learn early on in my ministry was never to show how shocked I was as people sat in my office and told me things about themselves that I would never have believed. We are all very good at putting on a great face on Sunday, but God knows who you are inside, and what your thought life is like, and what you do when no one is looking. He knows how ungodly your attitudes are, and how selfish you really are, etc. I think many of us would have been uncomfortable around John.

The title “tetrarch” meant that the Romans had divided up the territory they had conquered in that part of the world into four parts, and Herod was the ruler of one of those four parts. Mark calls him the king, probably because that was what the people commonly called him, even though that was not his official title. As far as the general populace was concerned, there wasn’t much difference between a tetrarch and a king—they both had pretty much absolute authority to do whatever they wanted.

Before The Dance, Herod seemed to have a weak, but alive, conscience. Mark says that Herod feared John. I think there was something about this rough and simple man of God that unsettled the powerful Herod. John’s message was so uncomplicated: stop sinning. He cut through all the excuses, all the rationalizations, all the justifications, all the moral relativism: stop sinning. Herod found that a little unnerving, because he lived in what one commentator called “spineless relativity”.[1]

Herod was also greatly puzzled by John. The word in v.20 means to be uncertain, to be in doubt, to have questions. There was something about John’s clear straightforward message that spoke to Herod’s conscience. He didn’t have all the answers for John’s accusations; instead he found himself with a lot of questions. Herod was unwilling to give in to his wife’s demands to kill John because he found a strange fascination in listening to him. At that point, he still had a conscience, even if it was weak, and John was able to reach it.

First, he made an impulsive and extravagant promise to his daughter to give her whatever she wanted. No doubt he was more than a little drunk, which is a caution against drinking too much, but the deeper problem is he was impulsive. He spoke before he thought, and he said something he later wished he hadn’t.

I’m sure we’ve all done that, and discovered that once the words are out of our mouths, there is no taking them back. We have made promises we knew we couldn’t keep, as Herod did. We have hurt people who are important to us, people we love, because we spoke impulsively. The shame, the embarrassment, the regret are horrible. It’s almost comical to read in the papers about various celebrities and famous people falling all over themselves apologizing for some racist or homophobic remark, and insisting that they really don’t believe the things they said. Jerry Lewis was the latest one I saw last week protesting that he’s really not prejudiced against gays.

Really? Jesus said, Matthew 12:34-35, “…out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. [35] The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him.” Unfortunately, the things we say are pretty reliable indicators of what is in our hearts, and sometimes it is really embarrassing to discover what is in there.

What does your speech indicate about your heart? If you are impulsive, like Herod, you might want to pay more attention to what comes out of your mouth, and learn to guard that a little better. Because I am often lacking in tact, I have often prayed the prayer in Psalm 141:3, “Set a guard over my mouth, O Lord; keep watch over the door of my lips.” And then beg God to do the deeper work of changing your heart so that your words—even the impulsive ones—reflect only His love and grace.

Then when Salome asks for John’s head, Herod doesn’t refuse her. Here is where we see the clearest distinction between Herod and John. John fears no one but God. He didn’t care what the Pharisees or anybody else thought of him. He wants to please God more than he wants to please anyone else, even the tetrarch, who has the authority to execute him. All John cared about was making God happy. As a result, He obeyed God, He spoke God’s word boldly, clearly, fearlessly, even though it got under the skin of a lot of people.

Herod, however, was a people-pleaser. You wouldn’t expect that of a man with that kind of power, but he did something he didn’t want to do, just because of the people who were present. He wanted to please his guests, to enhance his reputation in their eyes, more than he wanted to do what was right.

Proverbs 29:25 says, “To be afraid of men is a snare,” and Herod fell into it. As do many of us. We are “pleasers”. We learned early on in our childhood that it was important to please certain people around us. I learned that if I didn’t please my mother, things were intolerable for a few days, so I was always walking on eggshells in an effort not to offend her. Whatever Mom wanted, Mom got, because she could make my life very painful if I didn’t.

Are you a pleaser? Do you sometimes compromise what you know you should do, in order not to offend someone? Do you sometimes say things differently, or not say something you should, just because you don’t want to offend someone? I think many of us feel this way with one or two significant others in our lives; the unfortunate few feel compelled to please everyone in their lives, even though that is obviously impossible.

When I got into the ministry, I heard someone say, “You can’t please all the people all the time.” Now, after nearly 35 years, I would rephrase that: “You can’t please all the people any of the time.” No matter what you do, there will always be someone who is unhappy with you. So I have struggled my whole career with the temptation and the pull to do things that will please certain people. I know it’s not right, but I hate to make people unhappy with me. Of course, there have been plenty of times when I have stood my ground and done the right thing. But then I have grieved deeply over people leaving the church, or losing friends, or whatever. It never seems to get any easier for me.

People-pleasers fear people more than they fear God. They wind up doing and saying things they shouldn’t, or not doing and not saying things they should, just to please people. That’s the snare Proverbs is talking about.

Herod didn’t fear God, but he did fear the opinion of his guests that day. They heard him make that extravagant offer to Salome, and her outrageous request. I can imagine them all leaning in as Salome boldly announced, “I want the head of John the Baptist on a platter right now!” How would Herod handle that? Would he keep his word? Would he be too weak to kill John?

What would you do? Have you ever made a foolish promise, and then felt compelled to keep it because of what others would think of you?

Pride comes into play here as well. The moment Herod made that outrageous offer to Salome, he should have said, “No! Wait! I don’t mean that. That’s stupid. I just want you to know that I really liked the dance. Do another one.” He had another chance when she demanded John’s head on a platter. He should have said, “I’m so sorry. I know I promised you anything at all, but that was stupid of me. I spoke impulsively, and didn’t think about the implications of what I said. I will not kill John. Ask me for something else.” That’s what he should have done, but his pride got in the way. He thought he would look foolish, or weak, if he did that. Do you notice how national leaders often fall into this trap? They do or say something that turns out to be horribly wrong, but they think it is a sign of weakness to admit fault, so they just try to cover it up with spin, or bluster, or something. Pride goes before a fall.

When you make a mistake, admit it. A sincere apology goes a lot farther toward building your reputation than denying that you messed up in the first place.

It is significant that Herod didn’t want to kill John. Mark says he was “greatly distressed” at Salome’s request. The only other time this word is used in the New Testament is when it describes Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane before He was crucified.[2] Herod didn’t want to kill John, but he didn’t want to look foolish or weak in the eyes of his guests, either. He waffled ever so slightly, and then he killed a man—a prophet; one whom Jesus described as the greatest man who ever lived up until then (Matt 11:11). Because Herod was a people-pleaser. He sacrificed his conscience and he sacrificed a man for the sake of other people’s opinions.

Some people spend their whole lives basing their decisions on what others think of them. There are politicians who vote with the polls rather than their conscience. There are businesspeople who have their eye on the corporate ladder and advancing their career rather than on the judgment seat of God. There are students who sell their souls in order to fit in with their peers or their professors. There are parents who let their kids rule the house because they don’t want to upset the little darlings. There are husbands and wives who submerge their own identities rather than “make a scene” with their spouse. Are you a people-pleaser?

Worse than that, there are people who have missed out on a life with God because they didn’t want to be associated with Christians. It would put them in the wrong crowd at work, or in school. Their peers didn’t think Christianity was intellectually respectable, so they turned away from the One who is ultimate Truth. Their friends didn’t think it was cool to go to church, so they didn’t. What a tragedy it will be when they get to the end of their lives and discover that they picked the wrong people to please.

Jesus’ fame has been growing, and news of Him finally gets to Herod. Herod immediately leaps to the completely illogical conclusion that Jesus must be John the Baptist raised from the dead. It’s not obvious in English, but the Greek construction puts the emphasis in v. 16 on “I” – “John, the man I beheaded…” He feels so guilty about what he has done that he isn’t thinking straight. He reminds us of Lady Macbeth, repeatedly washing her hands and crying for the bloody spot to go away.

Our culture has done its best to get rid of guilt, by getting rid of sin. If nothing is wrong, then you have no need to feel guilty. Secular psychologists are taught that guilt itself is a problem that needs to be treated with therapy.

But guilt is God’s gift. It’s like physical pain for the soul; it alerts us to the fact that something is wrong, and needs to be fixed. If we merely treat the pain, but do not treat the underlying cause, we could do great harm. For example, if a person were experiencing severe abdominal pain from a ruptured appendix and all the doctors did was to pump them full of morphine so they didn’t hurt any more, that person would eventually die for lack of adequate treatment. In the same way, if we feel guilty, but just try to make the guilt feelings go away, and don’t ever ask why we feel guilty, we could leave some major spiritual disease rampant in our souls.

What are you doing because of a guilty conscience? If there is something that is making you feel guilty, if you are acting bizarrely as Herod was, if you are not thinking straight because of guilt, friends, deal with it! Come see me, and we’ll go to the great Physician of souls and see if we can’t find out what’s wrong. Jesus is a specialist in dealing with sin and guilt; let Him treat you and you will be well for eternity.

How’s your conscience doing these days? Is it alive and well, is it thriving? Or are you slowly neglecting it to death? Are you immediately and attentively responsive to its cries, or do you just shut your ears and pretend you can’t hear it? I guarantee that if you ignore it long enough it will eventually stop crying. But then where will you be? If your body suddenly stopped sending you pain signals, you might enjoy that for a while, but pretty soon you’d be doing major damage to yourself and not even knowing it. Pay attention to your conscience, friends; it is God’s good gift to you.

[1] R. Kent Hughes, Mark, vol. 1 (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1989), p.140.

[2] Hughes, p.142.