Herod the Great

(Matt 2:1), king of Judea, was the son of Antipater and the progenitor of the other kings of the same name mentioned in the New Testament. He ruled Judea, then a Roman province, in the year of the Lord's birth in Bethlehem of Judea. Although Herod bore the title of king, he was subject to the Roman emperor. He was distinguished by savage ferocity. A whole series of cruelties marked his thirty-four-year reign; he even killed his own wife and two of his sons. In the thirty-third year of Herod's reign, as noted above, the Savior of the world, the Lord Jesus Christ, was born in Bethlehem.

When Herod learned of the newborn King of the Jews and feared that He might in time take the kingdom from him, he put to death fourteen thousand infants of Bethlehem, thinking to destroy the Christ Child Jesus among them. Soon afterward, however, he himself died a dreadful death at Jericho: he was eaten alive by worms. Before his death he divided the government of the kingdom among his three sons. He made Archelaus ruler over Judea, Samaria, and Idumea; Herod Antipas tetrarch over Galilee and Perea; and Philip ruler over three northern regions east of the Jordan: Iturea, Auranitis, and Trachonitis (Luke 3:1).

The well-known saying of Augustus, who, on hearing that Herod had killed his own son among the infants of Bethlehem, exclaimed, 'It is better to be Herod's pig than his son,' directly proves that the report of the slaughter of the infants of Bethlehem, in one form or another, reached Rome itself.