Herod the Great Rises to Power (40-37 BC)

The event

Herod was the son of Antipater, an Idumean who had risen to influence as a close advisor to the Hasmonean ruler Hyrcanus II and won the favor of Julius Caesar. Herod inherited his father's political skill, and amid the chaos of Rome's own civil wars he maneuvered his way into the Roman Senate's favor: in 40 BC the Senate declared him "King of the Jews" — a title he did not yet actually hold on the ground in Judea.

It took three more years of fighting, backed by Roman legions, before Herod finally captured Jerusalem from the last reigning Hasmonean claimant in 37 BC, ending Hasmonean rule for good and beginning his own long, consequential thirty-three-year reign.

Herod's Idumean ancestry — his family had been forcibly converted to Judaism a century earlier under John Hyrcanus — meant many Jews never regarded him as a legitimate king in the way a true descendant of David would be. That background tension sharpens the drama of the wise men's question that would one day reach his court: "Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews?" (Matthew 2:2), a rival claim to Herod's own contested title that provoked his murderous response (Matthew 2:16).

Herod's reign — marked by extraordinary building projects, including his massive renovation and expansion of the Jerusalem Temple that Jesus and His disciples would later walk through, alongside notorious paranoia and cruelty even toward his own family — sets the immediate political stage on which the Gospel narrative opens. With Herod's death in 4 BC, the intertestamental period proper gives way to the very years surrounding Christ's birth.

Dating

Herod's appointment as king by the Roman Senate in 40 BC and his actual capture of Jerusalem in 37 BC are dated by multiple converging sources, including Josephus and Roman consular records, and are essentially uncontested. His death is usually placed in 4 BC, a detail covered separately in the timeline entries surrounding Christ's birth.

Scripture references

• Matthew 2:1-3
• Matthew 2:16

Other witnesses

• Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 14.14-15
• Josephus, Jewish War 1.14-18