Charles Ellicott Commentary Matthew 14:1

"At that season Herod the tetrarch heard the report concerning Jesus," — Matthew 14:1 (ASV)

Herod the tetrarch — He was the son of Herod the Great by Malthace. Under his father’s will, he succeeded to the government of Galilee and Perea with the title of Tetrarch, as ruler of a fourth part of the Roman province of Syria. His first wife was a daughter of Aretas, an Arabian king or chief mentioned in 2 Corinthians 11:32 as king of the Damascenes. Herodias, the wife of his half-brother Philip (not the Tetrarch of Trachonitis from Luke 3:1, but a son of Herod the Great by Mariamne who, though wealthy, held no official position as a ruler), was the daughter of Aristobulus, the son whom Herod put to death. She was therefore the niece of both her husbands.

Prompted partly by passion and partly by ambition, she left Philip and became the wife of Antipas (Josephus, Antiquities 18.5.4). The marriage, at once adulterous and, by the Mosaic law, doubly incestuous, shocked the conscience of all the stricter Jews. This union involved Antipas in a war with the father of the wife whom he had divorced and dismissed. It was probably in connection with this war that we read of soldiers on active duty coming under the teaching of the Baptist in Luke 3:14. The prophetic spirit of the Baptist—the very spirit of Elijah in his dealings with Ahab and Jezebel—made him the spokesman for the general feeling, and so brought him within range of the guilty queen’s vindictive bitterness.

Heard of the fame of Jesus — These words do not necessarily imply that no news had reached him until now. Our Lord’s ministry, however, had been underway for at most a year at this time, and possibly less. Antipas, residing at Tiberias and surrounded by courtiers, might well have been slow to hear of the works and teaching of the Prophet of Nazareth. Possibly, the nobleman of Capernaum (John 4:46), Manaen the tetrarch's foster brother (Acts 13:1), or Chuza his steward (Luke 8:3), may have been among his first informants, along with the “servants” (the word is not the one used for “slaves”) to whom he now shared his theory about the reported wonders.