HEROD


There is a person we should be aware of: Herod the Great. We keep hearing about Herod. As we speak of the birth of Jesus, of the Magi, the name Herod comes out again and again, then Herod's son, Herod Agrippa. It would be good to say something about Herod the Great.Herod the Great came in power through scheming. He is called "the Great" because of the kind of great works that he did - great construction. Actually, instead of saying "Herod the Great," we could say "Herod, the Great Builder." It would give us a better picture of who he really was.

Herod the Great was a king for about thirty-three years, from the year 37 before Jesus Christ to the year 4. He has a great deal of construction to his credit: streets, palaces, all kinds of defenses, gardens.
One that a lot of people are familiar with today is the Fortress of Massada, about 90 miles southeast of Jerusalem, and about fifteen hundred feet above the wilderness of Judea.

It is interesting because as you go down towards the Dead Sea, you look on the right and you see all these sort of barren mountaintops, or ridges, that all sort of look the same. But one of them is a fortress.
On top of Massada, Herod decided to build a fortress, and it became a real stronghold. He built a palace on top - this is about thirty-one years before Jesus Christ (31 years B.C.). On Massada there are all kinds of facilities, military installations, and there were, of course, all kinds of provisions. Imagine a cistern containing two million gallons of water. You wonder how they ever were able to get anything up there. All the walls are in stone, and there are still remains of one of the earliest Synagogues that we know, on top of Massada.

On the backside, there were three levels of palaces. The first level was for courtiers; the second, the middle palace, was for concubines, and the top one was for King Herod and his wives.
As you go down now towards Bethlehem, just about eight miles south of Jerusalem, there is another place called "Herodium." It is another fortress. It's even harder to imagine. This is the only place that Herod named according to himself: "Herodium," in honor ofHerod who built it. It is about forty-five acres.

Here is the way it's made.Think of a building that would be seven stories high, built on a platform. On each corner, three semi-circular towers, and then a round tower of fifty-five feet in diameter. Then a cylindrical double wall. That sounds pretty strong. Can you imagine now just banking this up with dirt and gravel, all the way up, seven stories high. So, as you go to Bethlehem (still today, you can see this very well), and you look on the right at a distance, you see this huge cone. You know what it looks like? It looks like a volcano. It was man-made. A seven story high volcano, man-made, with all the gravel and dirt all around it. It made it impossible to penetrate.

This was, again, another one of the famous defenses that was built by Herod. Lower now, at the bottom of the man-made hill, there was a huge palace, great swimming pool, colonnaded pavilions, formal gardens, service building, and a mysterious monumental building, and we know, according to Josefus, that when Herod died in Jericho, they came in a procession to bury him at Herodium. People have been looking for years for where he was buried, because they suspect that a great deal of treasures were buried with him. Lately, they found it was not inside, because it was all excavated, but rather somewhere on the bottom - ground level, near the fortress.

Then there extends from there an eleven-hundred foot long artificial terrace.
If we go down to Jericho, it is a very beautiful place, with palm trees and fruit trees, like a real oasis in this desert area of Israel. Herod received this as a gift (it had belonged to Mark Anthony and Cleopatra) and it was at first leased by Herod and then finally given to him after the death of Mark Anthony and Cleopatra.Here, Herod built an ingenious water system. He also built a first, a second, and then a third palace. This time not generally a palace, but a whole palace complex, with a reception room of sixty­by-ninety feet.

Now, we go to Caesarea by the Sea (there are two Caesareas), between Tel Aviv and Haifa. This is a construction that Herod began in the year 21 B.C., and dedicated to the emperor, Caesar Augustus, in 10 B.C. That's why it was called Caesarea. In order to get drinking water, Herod had an aqueduct built, twelve miles long from springs in Carmel, bringing water into this new seaport of Caesarea.
Most of this aqueduct was very beautiful - beautiful Roman arches. Happily, a part of this aqueduct that was all covered by the sand of the sea, was unearthed. Today we can see the beautiful work that was done.

In Caesarea, Herod had built a theater with a capacity of four thousand people. This is marvelous, the way it is built. It has been renewed, and is being used today. The stage has the back to the sea and the voice carries so well that if you stand on the stage and you speak, the people all over can hear you very well. if you speak or sing, the voice carries perfectly well. It's a feat of construction - you don't need a microphone and you can be heard very well. Not far from there, Herod had sort of a racing track built - a hippodrome with thirty-eight thousand seats, for horse and chariot racing. And then, market places, and then a temple to the Emperor Augustus.He certainly built himself a palace, with a swimming pool, and a fifty-four foot wide colonnaded street. Then sidewalks, mosaic floors, and then, to protect the harbor, a breakwater of about fifteen hundred feet. Can you imagine that?
Now all these things, we could say, are minor. The great construction of Herod was in Jerusalem, his palace, in the year 23 B.C., and then all the work he did for the temple. In the year 19 B.C., he began the porticos of the temple. The retaining wall, the platform that he built near the temple, is about thirty-six acres. It's hard to imagine the size; that's why we say "the Great Builder."

In the Western Wall, what was called the "Wailing Wall," seven courses of huge Herodian blocks, or ashlars, really beautiful dressed stone, cut, polished with double margins, seven courses high. What they found south of the Western Wall, nineteen rows of blocks below ground, all the way down to the bedrock. This is amazing. Some of these stones weigh as much as four hundred tons. There are some stones as much as twenty-six feet long.Then, there is the Citadel, near the Jaffa Gate. We still can see today the remains of a one-hundred twenty-five foot high tower in honor of his brother Bezel. Then of course, the Antonio Fortress.

With Herod the Great's reputation as "the Great Builder", do you know why we remember Herod today? Because he was so scared that he ordered the massacre of the innocents, hoping to destroy Jesus, the newborn King.