Acts 12:1-5 1Now about that time, Herod the king laid hands on some of those from the church to do evil. 2And he killed James, the brother of John, with a sword, 3and when he saw that it was pleasing to the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also. It was during the days of Unleavened Bread. 4And when he had seized him, he put him in prison, delivering him over to four squads of soldiers to guard him, planning after the Passover to bring him to the people. 5Therefore, Peter was guarded in prison, but earnest prayer for him was made to God by the church.
While the church in Antioch was experiencing great days of growth and expansion, the church back in Judea and Jerusalem faced many challenges, including the famine that Agabus prophesied about. The next passage mentions another big challenge for the church with Herod’s persecution of believers. The time reference about that time beginning of this chapter may intentionally compare this passage to the previous one. In the book of Acts, Luke often intersperses accounts of persecution in the midst of stories about great growth. This pattern fits what Jesus warned his disciples about. The Holy Spirit would be with them, but because they bore his name as witnesses, they would also face opposition, persecution, and even death.
The Herod mentioned here was Agrippa I, born around 10 B.C., son of Aristobulus, and the grandson of Herod the Great. He was sent to Rome as a child and learned Roman ways. He eventually became a friend of Caligula. When Caligula became emperor after Tiberius, he made Agrippa king over Galilee. Eventually, under the emperor Claudius, in about AD 41, Agrippa was made king also over all of Judea and Samaria. Because of his affiliation with Rome and his position of power over the Jews, he tried to please the Jews in power. This meant persecuting the followers of Jesus of Nazareth. Not much is stated or known about what happened in Jerusalem in the church leading up to this point. The clues in the previous stories in Acts suggest a growing opposition to the church because of their claims about Jesus as Messiah (from the Sanhedrin) and their openness to include Gentiles (among legalistic Pharisees). Herod wanted to please the Jews and gain influence, so he began to do evil to the believers and had James, the son of Zebedee and brother of John, killed by the sword. The way Romans typically killed someone with a sword was by beheading. Jews preferred death by stabbing. Either way would have been a quick way to die. The account is brief. This news must have been devastating to the church since this was one of the special apostles who knew Jesus well and had been with him from the beginning.
Herod Agrippa saw that James’ execution accomplished what he hoped for by pleasing the Jews, he wanted to continue, so he went right to the top and had Peter arrested. It would not have been difficult to find Peter. The mention of the Feast of Unleavened Bread explains why Peter was not executed right away. The feast was a time when many people would have been in Jerusalem, and executing someone would have been considered sacrilegious. Herod would have planned to have Peter executed after the Passover was over. Meanwhile, he had Peter guarded by four squads. A squad would have been four soldiers. Significant force was used to ensure no escape or people trying to free the leader of the followers of Jesus.
All the details in the first four verses paint a bad picture and outcome for James, Peter, and likely other believers as Herod’s momentum built. Verse 5 ends with the response of the church. They were helpless against Herod and his Roman forces. The situation was looking bleak and impossible. The other believers turned to their only hope: prayer for God’s intervention. These verses raise two questions: Why did God allow James, one of the key leaders of the early church, to be killed? And, what hope did the church have as expressed in their prayer? God does not always keep trouble from us but will help us through the trouble we face.
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