and said to his servants, “This is John the Baptizer. He is risen from the dead. That is why these powers work in him.”
Parallel Translations
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and said to his servants, “This is John the Baptizer. He is risen from the dead. That is why these powers work in him.”
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and sayde vnto his servautes: This is Ihon the baptist. He is risen agayne from deeth and therfore are soche myracles wrought by him.
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And sayde vnto his seruaunts, This is that Iohn Baptist, hee is risen againe from the deade, and therefore great woorkes are wrought by him.
Examined in Scripture Analysis
Contradictions (1)
Questions where the Bible appears to say two different things, with the passages on each side set together.
Cross-references (4)
Passages linked to Matthew 14:2 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Matthew 16:14 They said, “Some say John the Baptizer, some, Elijah, and others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.”
- John 10:41 Many came to him. They said, “John indeed did no sign, but everything that John said about this man is true.”
- Mark 8:28 They told him, “John the Baptizer, and others say Elijah, but others: one of the prophets.”
- Matthew 11:11 Most certainly I tell you, among those who are born of women there has not arisen anyone greater than John the Baptizer; yet he who is least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (14 sources)
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Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain By works he meaneth that force and power, whereby…
By works he meaneth that force and power, whereby works are wrought and not the works, as is seen oft before.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain 2 And said unto his servants, This is John…
2 And said unto his servants, This is John the Baptist; he is risen from the dead; and therefore mighty works do shew forth themselves in him.
Ver. 2. And said unto his servants] So seeking a diversion of his inward terrors and torments. Perplexed he was and could find no way out, as St Luke’s word {Luk 9:7} importeth. (Διηπορει, de iis dicitur qui ita perplexi, et impediti quasi in luto tenentur, ut πορον μη ευρισκουσι, exitum non inveniant, Beza.) Conscience will hamper a guilty person, and fill him often with unquestionable conviction and horror. As those that were condemned to be crucified, bare their cross, that should soon after bear them: so God hath laid upon evildoers the cross of their own consciences, that thereon they may suffer afore they suffer; and their greatest enemies need not wish them a greater mischief. For assuredly, a body is not so torn with stripes, as a mind with the remembrance of wicked actions. And here Cain runs to building of cities, Saul to the delight of music, Belshazzar to quaffing and carousing, Herod to his minions and catamites; {a} so to put by, if possible, that melancholy dumps and heartqualms, as they count and call inward terrors. But conscience will not be pacified by these sorry anodynes of the devil. Wicked men may skip and leap up and down for a while, as the wounded deer doth; sed haeret lateri lethalis arundo, the deadly dart sticks fast in their sides, and will do without true repentance, till it hath brought them, as it did Herod, to desperation and destruction, so that he laid violent hands upon himself at Lyons in France, whither he and his courtezan were banished by Augustus. {b}
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This is John the Baptist] Herod had thought to have hugged his Herodias without control when once the Baptist was beheaded; but it proved somewhat otherwise. Indeed so long as he played alone, he was sure to win all. But now conscience came in to play her part, Herod is in a worse case than ever; for he imagined still that he saw and heard that holy head shouting and crying out against him, staring him also in the face at every turn; as that tyrant thought he saw the head of Symmachus, whom he had basely slain, in the mouth of the fish that was set before him on the table. And as Judge Morgan, who gave the sentence of condenmation against the Lady Jane Grey, shortly after he had condemned her, fell mad, and in his raving cried out continually to have the Lady Jane taken away from him, and so ended his life.
{a} τοις παισιν αυτου, to his boys, which haply were his serious loves.
{b} Nam non multo post haec, secutum est tyranni exilium et exitium. Joseph. lib. 18, cap. 9.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain And said unto his servants,.... Those of his household,…
And said unto his servants,.... Those of his household, his courtiers, with whom he more familiarly conversed; to these he expressed his fears, that it might be true what was suggested by the people, and he was ready to believe it himself;
this is John the Baptist: some copies add, "whom I have beheaded", as in Mar 6:16 the guilt of which action rose in his mind, lay heavy on him, and filled him with horror and a thousand fears:
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he is risen from the dead; which if he was a Sadducee, as he is thought to be, by comparing Mat 16:6 with Mar 8:15 was directly contrary to his former sentiments, and was extorted from him by his guilty conscience; who now fears, what before he did not believe; and what he fears, he affirms; concluding that John was raised from the dead, to give proof of his innocence, and to revenge his death on him:
and therefore mighty works do show themselves in him, or "are wrought by him"; for though he wrought no miracles in his lifetime, yet, according to a vulgar notion, that after death men are endued with a greater power, Herod thought this to be the case; or that he was possessed of greater power, on purpose to punish him for the murder of him; and that these miracles which were wrought by him, were convincing proofs of the truth of his resurrection, and of what he was able to do to him, and what he might righteously expect from him.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain He is risen from the dead - Herod was…
He is risen from the dead - Herod was a Sadducee: and the Sadducees denied the resurrection of the dead. But Sadduceeism staggers when conscience awakes.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 2. This is John the Baptist] ον εγω…
Verse 2. This is John the Baptist] ον εγω απεκεφαλισα, Whom I beheaded. These words are added here by the Codex Bezae and several others, by the Saxon, and five copies of the Itala. - See the power of conscience! He is miserable because he is guilty; being continually under the dominion of self-accusation, reproach, and remorse. No need for the Baptist now: conscience performs the office of ten thousand accusers! But, to complete the misery, a guilty conscience offers no relief from God - points out no salvation from sin.
He is risen from the dead] From this we may observe:
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1. That the resurrection of the dead was a common opinion among the Jews; and
2. That the materiality of the soul made no part of Herod's creed.
Bad and profligate as he was, it was not deemed by him a thing impossible with God to raise the dead; and the spirit of the murdered Baptist had a permanent resurrection in his guilty conscience.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain This is John the Baptist - Herod feared John.…
This is John the Baptist - Herod feared John. His conscience smote him for his crimes. He remembered that he had wickedly put him to death. He knew him to be a distinguished prophet; and he concluded that no other one was capable of working such miracles but he who had been so eminent a servant of God in his life, and who, he supposed, had again risen from the dead and entered the dominions of his murderer. The alarm in his court, it seems, was general. Herod’s conscience told him that this was John. Others thought that it might be the expected Elijah or one of the old prophets, Mar 6:15.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain Risen from the dead. St. Jerome thinks these words…
Risen from the dead. St. Jerome thinks these words are spoken by Herod ironically; but they are generally supposed to be his real sentiments, the dictates of a guilty conscience. For he respected John, as appears from ver. 9, and was afraid he was returned to avenge his unjust murder. (Jansenius) --- Mighty works shew forth themselves in him,[1] or work in him. (Witham)
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[BIBLIOGRAPHY]
Operantur in eo, Greek: energousin en anto; which shews that operantur is taken actively, not passively, as in some places.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain And said unto his servants--his counsellors or court-ministers.
And said unto his servants--his counsellors or court-ministers.
This is John the Baptist: he is risen from the dead, &c.--The murdered prophet haunted his guilty breast like a specter and seemed to him alive again and clothed with unearthly powers in the person of Jesus.
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Account of the Baptist's Imprisonment and Death (Mat 14:3-12). For the exposition of this portion, see on Mar 6:17-29.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 2. Said unto his servants — Why Herod should…
2. Said unto his servants — Why Herod should thus express himself to his servants, so likely to have been skeptical and dissolute men, seems at first view difficult to say. But one or two apparently accidental allusions elsewhere in the Gospels afford, perhaps, some explanation. We learn from Luk_8:3, that among those who administered to Jesus of their substance was Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward. And again in Act_13:1, we are told that among other distinguished converts was Manaen, which had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch; that is, was his foster brother. We see then, that as at a later period there were saints in Cesar’s household, so there were also believers in the household of Herod. Through these the solemn reports of the deeds and teachings of Jesus doubtless reached the guilty king. Consequently “he was desirous of seeing him, because he had heard many things of him.” And to such servants he could doubtless express the believing sentiments attributed to him.
This is John the Baptist — Herod Antipas did not identify Jesus as the newborn King of the Jews announced to his father’s house by the Magi. That fear had long since been dismissed and forgotten. Nor did he seem distinctly to understand that Jesus claimed Messiahship. Antipas was king by descent from his Herodian paternity, and maternally from the more noble Asmonean line; but how feebly could both these compare with an heirship like that of Jesus from the ancient line of David and Solomon. Herod was Edomite; but purely national was the blood of the family of Nazareth.
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Jesus did at last appear before Herod, (Luk_23:6-12;) sent in bonds by Pilate to Herod as the subject of his jurisdiction. Herod was at first interested to see Jesus, in hopes of beholding some display of that miraculous power by which he is at the present time so much perplexed and harrowed in conscience. But when Jesus maintained an impenetrable silence, the irritated Antipas arrayed him in tawdry robes in mockery of his royalty, and remanded him to Pilate. Risen from the dead — His conscience seemed to conjure up the murdered John from his grave. Luke adds that the tyrant was “perplexed;” and when it was rumoured that Jesus was the risen John, and one courtier suggested that he was Elias, and another that he was some one of the ancient prophets reappearing, Herod Antipas finishes with: “John have I beheaded, but who is this of whom I hear such things?” These conjectures imply, not a belief in a transmigration of souls, but simply in extraordinary resurrections. The whole account furnishes a vivid picture of a profligate set of men, interrupted in the midst of their riot and wickedness by supernatural rumours and horrors of conscience. A comparison of Mar_8:15, with Mat_16:6. furnishes reason to suppose that Herod was a Sadducee. For in the one passage the leaven or doctrine of Herod appears to be the same as the leaven of the Sadducees, and Luke tells us (Luk_9:7) that he was “perplexed because it was said of some that John was risen from the dead; and of some that Elias had appeared; and of others that one of the old prophets was risen again.” So thickly did these rumours come that he seems to have given in the point that the murdered John had reappeared from the grave. Though a Sadducee, yet guilt made him a cowardly sort of a believer. So true it is that irreligious men are often tremblingly superstitious. Being unconsoled by the truths of religion, they are exposed to be frightened by any form of horror suggested to the imagination by a guilty conscience. Therefore mighty works — The implication is that John had acquired a miracle-working power after rising from the dead. This is a striking incidental confirmation of Joh_10:41, that John wrought no miracles while living.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 2. he] The Greek is emphatic, “he himself,” “in…
2. he] The Greek is emphatic, “he himself,” “in his own person.”
risen from the dead] A proof that Herod did not hold the Sadducean doctrine, that there is no resurrection.
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and therefore] In consequence of having risen from the dead he is thought to be possessed of larger powers. Alford remarks that this incidentally confirms St John’s statement (ch. Mat_10:41), that John wrought no miracle while living.
mighty works do shew forth themselves] Literally, works of power are active in him.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (2) This is John the Baptist.—In Mat_16:14, Luk_9:7-9, this…
(2) This is John the Baptist.—In Mat_16:14, Luk_9:7-9, this is given as one of the three opinions that were floating among the people as to our Lord’s character, the other two being, (1) that He was Elijah, and (2) that He was one of the old prophets who had risen again. The policy of the tetrarch connected him with the Sadducean priestly party rather than with the more popular and rigid Pharisees, and a comparison of Mat_16:6 with Mar_8:15 at least suggests the identity of the “leaven of Herod” with that of the Sadducees. On this supposition, his acceptance of the first of the three rumours is every way remarkable. The superstitious terror of a conscience stained with guilt is stronger than his scepticism as a Sadducee, even though there mingled with it, as was probable enough, the wider unbelief of Roman epicureanism. To him the new Prophet, working signs and wonders which John had never worked, was but the re-appearance of the man whom he had murdered. It was more than a spectre from the unseen world, more than the metempsychosis of the soul of John into another body. It was nothing less than John himself.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain And said unto his servants. According to Luke, the…
And said unto his servants. According to Luke, the following assertion was brought forward by some, but was, it would seem, summarily rejected by Herod; (Luk_9:7, Luk_9:9) according to Mark (elegon , Westcott and Hort, text) it was common talk, and agreed to by Herod. (Mar_6:14, 16) If a reconciliation of so unimportant a verbal disagreement be sought for, it may perhaps lie in Luke representing Herod"s first exclamation, and Matthew, with Mark, his settled belief. Clearly Herod did not originate it, as the summary account in our Gospel would lead us to suppose. This is John the Baptist. (Mat_3:1 and 4:12, notes) (For this opinion about our Lord, compare, besides the parallel passages referred to in the last note, also Mat_16:14) He (autov , Mat_1:21, note) is risen from the dead. The other dead still lie in Hades (apo twn nekrwn). Plumptre, on Mark, adduces a curious passage from Persius, 5:180-188, which he thinks is based on a story that when Herod celebrated another of his birthdays (cf. ver. 6) in Rome, in A.D. 39, he was terrified by a Banquo-like appearance of the murdered prophet. The superstition that already suggested to Herod the resurrection of John might well act more strongly on the anniversary of the murder, and after he had connived at the death of the One who, by his miracles, showed that he possessed greater power than John. And therefore; "because he is no ordinary man, but one risen from the dead" (Meyer). Mighty works do show forth themselves in him (ai dunameiv energousin en ai tw) do these powers work in him (Revised Version). "These" (ai , the article of reference), i.e. these which are spoken of in the report (ver. 1). Ai dunameiv may be
(1) specifically miracles, (cf. Mat_13:58) in which case they are regarded as potentially active in John before their completion in history; or
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(2) the powers of working miracles, as perhaps in 1Co_12:28. Observe that this passage confirms the statement of Joh_10:41, that John performed no miracle. Observe that it is also an indirect witness to the fact of our Lord performing miracles. For Herod"s utterance is not such as a forger would have imagined.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain 2. This is John the Baptist. Herod claimed to…
2. This is John the Baptist. Herod claimed to be a Sadducee, and hence held that there was no life whatever after death, but under the terrors of a guilty conscience his creed undergoes a change. Hence his first thought when he hears of the deeds of Jesus is that the murdered John has risen from the dead. Therefore mighty works do shew forth themselves in him. During his life John wrought no miracles (John 10:41). Herod supposed that his resurrection had clothed him with new power. This opinion was shared by others (Matt. 16:14; Mark 8:28).
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 14:2 There was a rumor that John had been…
14:2 There was a rumor that John had been resurrected (see 16:14).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.