but Herodias could not be content to
stand aside as a mere spectator of the brilliant game of governing. So
she seized the opportunity which the presence of Antipas in her house,
by her husband's hospitality, gave her to begin an intrigue, which ended
in her marital union with the tetrarch. By this conduct she trampled on
Jewish law and offended the people. Not that the severing of the
marriage bonds was a thing unusual among the Jews; indeed, the
facilities for divorce were exceedingly liberal. A man could put away
his wife for the most trifling cause. "If anyone," said the rabbis, "see
a woman handsomer than his wife, he may dismiss his wife and marry that
woman." It was considered ample cause for divorce if a wife went out
without her veil. The disciples of Hillel even went so far as to hold
that if a woman spoiled her husband's dinner, by burning or over salting
it, sufficient cause was given him, if he so chose, to put her away.
This is the point of the question with which the Pharisees came to try
Christ. "Is it lawful," said they, "for a man to put away his wife for
every cause?" So, then, that which shocked the Jews and caused them to
agree with John in his denunciation of Herod was not that the latter
divorced his first wife, the daughter of Aretas, but that he took
Herodias, she not having been put away by her husband, Philip. Here is
some very remarkable moral sophistry. It would have been right, in the
sight of Jewish law, for Herod and Philip to have exchanged wives, after
legally divorcing them for any cause which might have seemed to them
proper; but there was no law, nor was there any conceivable wrong, which
could give Herodias the right to leave her husband of her own free will.
Women could not gain divorce. So, according to the Jewish idea, the
fault of Herod consisted solely in the fact that Philip had not yet seen
fit to release Herodias. Whether or not John the Baptist concurred with
the ideas of his time on this subject we do not know; but the One who
came after him put marriage on a far higher basis and restricted divorce
to its essential cause.

Herodias plotted and achieved John's destruction perhaps as much on
account of her fear of the effect of his influence upon Herod's
ambitious projects as because of her resentment at his charges against
herself. She was determined that Herod should be a king, like her
brother Agrippa; but the latter was a great favorite with Caligula, and
when his letter