(15) It is both here and elsewhere very remarkable, that the murders of the vilest tyrants, who yet highly deserved to die, when those murderers were under oaths, or other the like obligations of fidelity to them, were usually revenged, and the murderers were cut off themselves, and that after a remarkable manner; and this sometimes, as in the present case, by those very persons who were not sorry for such murders, but got kingdoms by them.The examples are very numerous, both in sacred and profane histories, and seem generally indications of Divine vengeance on such murderers.Nor is it unworthy of remark, that such murderers of tyrants do it usually on such ill principles, in such a cruel manner, and as ready to involve the innocent with the guilty, which was the case here, ch.1.sect.14, and ch.2.sect.4, as justly deserved the Divine vengeance upon them.Which seems to have been the case of Jehu also, when, besides the house of Ahab, for whose slaughter he had a commission from God, without any such commission, any justice or commiseration, he killed Ahab's great men, and acquaintance, and priests, and forty-two of the kindred of Ahaziah, 2 Kings 10:11-14.See Hosea 1:4.I do not mean here to condemn Ehud or Judith, or the like executioners of God's vengeance on those wicked tyrants who had unjustly oppressed God's own people under their theocracy; who, as they appear still to have had no selfish designs nor intentions to slay the innocent, so had they still a Divine commission, or a Divine impulse, which was their commission for what they did, Judges 3:15, 19, 20; Judith 9:2; Test.Levi.sect.5, in Authent.
Rec.p.312.See also page 432.
(16) Here St.Luke is in some measure confirmed, when he reforms us, ch.3:1, that Lysanias was some time before tetrarch of Abilene, whose capital was Abila; as he is further confirmed by Ptolemy, the great geographer, which Spanheim here observes, when he calls that city Abila of Lysanias.See the note on B.XVII.
ch.11.sect.4; and Prid.at the years 36 and 22.I esteem this principality to have belonged to the land of Canaan originally, to have been the burying-place of Abel, and referred to as such, Matthew 23:35; Luke 11:51.See Authent.Rec.Part.II.p.
883--885.
(17) This form was so known and frequent among the Romans, as Dr.Hudson here tells us from the great Selden, that it used to be thus represented at the bottom of their edicts by the initial letters only, U.D.P.R.L.P, Unde De Plano Recte Lege Possit;"Whence it may be plainly read from the ground."(18) Josephus shows, both here and ch.7.sect.3, that he had a much greater opinion of king Agrippa I.than Simon the learned Rabbi, than the people of Cesarea and Sebaste, ch.7.sect.4;and ch.9.sect.1; and indeed than his double-dealing between the senate and Claudius, ch.4.sect.2, than his slaughter of James the brother of John, and his imprisonment of Peter, or his vain-glorious behavior before he died, both in Acts 12:13; and here, ch.4.sect.1, will justify or allow.Josephus's character was probably taken from his son Agrippa, junior.
(19) This treasury-chamber seems to have been the very same in which our Savior taught, and where the people offered their charity money for the repairs or other uses of the temple, Mark 12:41, etc.; Luke 22:1; John 8:20.
(20) A strange number of condemned criminals to be under the sentence of death at once; no fewer, it seems, than one thousand four hundred!
(21) We have a mighty cry made here by some critics, as the great Eusebius had on purpose falsified this account of Josephus, so as to make it agree with the parallel account in the Acts of the Apostles, because the present copies of his citation of it, Hist.
Eceles.B.II.ch.10., omit the words an owl--on a certain rope, which Josephus's present copies retain, and only have the explicatory word or angel; as if he meant that angel of the Lord which St.Luke mentions as smiting Herod, Acts 12:23, and not that owl which Josephus called an angel or messenger, formerly of good, but now of bad news, to Agrippa.This accusation is a somewhat strange one in the case of the great Eusebius, who is known to have so accurately and faithfully produced a vast number of other ancient records, and particularly not a few out of our Josephus also, without any suspicion of prevarication.Now, not to allege how uncertain we are whether Josephus's and Eusebius's copies of the fourth century were just like the present in this clause, which we have no distinct evidence of, the following words, preserved still in Eusebius, will not admit of any such exposition: "This [bird] (says Eusebius) Agrippa presently perceived to be the cause of ill fortune, as it was once of good fortune, to him;" which can only belong to that bird, the owl, which as it had formerly foreboded his happy deliverance from imprisonment, Antiq.B.XVIII.ch.6.sect.7, so was it then foretold to prove afterward the unhappy forerunner of his death in five days' time.If the improper words signifying cause, be changed for Josephus's proper word angel or messenger, and the foregoing words, be inserted, Esuebius's text will truly represent that in Josephus.Had this imperfection been in some heathen author that was in good esteem with our modern critics, they would have readily corrected these as barely errors in the copies; but being in an ancient Christian writer, not so well relished by many of those critics, nothing will serve but the ill-grounded supposal of willful corruption and prevarication.
(22) This sum of twelve millions of drachmae, which is equal to three millions of shekels, i.e.at 2s.10d.a shekel, equal to four hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds sterling, was Agrippa the Great's yearly income, or about three quarters of his grandfather Herod's income; he having abated the tax upon houses at Jerusalem, ch.6.sect.3, and was not so tyrannical as Herod had been to the Jews.See the note on Antiq.B.XVII.ch.11.
sect.4.A large sum this! but not, it seems, sufficient for his extravagant expenses.
(23) Reland takes notice here, not improperly, that Josephus omits the reconciliation of this Herod Agrippa to the Tyrians and Sidoninus, by the means of Blastus the king's chamberlain, mentioned Acts 12:20.Nor is there any history in the world so complete, as to omit nothing that other historians take notice of, unless the one be taken out of the other, and accommodated to it.
(24) Photius, who made an extract out of this section, says they were not the statues or images, but the ladies themselves, who were thus basely abused by the soldiers.