What can Jezebel, the Bible’s wickedest queen, reveal about God’s holiness and power and even about his sense of humor? What about the Woman at the Well—the one with five husbands and a live-in lover? And what of the prostitute whose tears bathe the feet of Jesus in front of people who despise her?

There are also “wicked good” women like Deborah, Ruth, Hannah, Abigail, Esther, Mary, and more. What do their lives tell us about God’s invincible love and his determined plan to save us?

In her new book Wicked Women of the Bible (Zondervan, 2015), Ann Spangler (@annspangler) tells the stories of 20 wicked and “wicked good” women in greater detail. At the end of each story, Ann provides a brief section including additional historical and cultural background as well as a brief Bible study in order to enhance the book’s appeal to both individuals and groups.

The stories of these women of the Bible reveal a God who is not above it all but who stoops down to meet us where we are in order to extend his love and mercy.

[Subscribe to Ann Spangler’s weekly free email devotionals, Women of the Bible and Men of the Bible]

[See our blogpost: Wicked Women of the Bible: An Interview with Ann Spangler]

The following article is an excerpt from Wicked Women of the Bible by Ann Spangler. Visit WickedWomenOfTheBible.com to learn more. Save 47%! Pre-order the new book today from the Bible Gateway Store.]

[Also see the book excerpt, A Wicked Sorceress: The Story of the Medium of Endor]

A Wicked Birthday Party: The Story of Herodias and Salome

And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the
books were opened: and another book was opened, which is
the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things
which were written in the books, according to their works.
Revelation 20:12

Key Scriptures: Matthew 14:3-12; Mark 6:14-29

How a Wicked Mother-and-Daughter Combo Committed Bloody Murder

In the moonlight that streams through the window, she can see tiny beads of sweat glistening on his forehead. He is agitated and fitful, disturbed by some nocturnal vision. Even though she knows it’s coming, she jumps when his scream tears the silence. And he jumps too, now wide awake. Herod Antipas sits up in bed, recalling the terror he’s just lived through.

“It was John,” he exclaims. “So real. I saw the slash across his neck, the blood streaming down his beard and clumping in his hair. Suddenly he appeared, out of the darkness, pointing straight at me. Though his mouth was closed, I heard him say: ‘You viper! Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees, and the trees that bear no fruit shall be cut down and cast into the fire.’ He kept saying it, over and over, calling me a snake. I grabbed a club to beat him off, but he just stood there staring!

“Then I saw them, off to the side—a multitude of people screaming and in torment, burning but not burning up—and among them there was my face staring back at me!”

The tears are running down his face now. His body shakes. It has been like this off and on since the night of his birthday feast.

Herodias can still smell platters of meat, heaped high with sheep tail, roasted lamb, quail, and veal. She sees the servants weaving in and out of the raucous crowd, carrying trays loaded with grapes, figs, and dates, and delicate dishes made from gazelle meat and bird tongue. There are almonds, olives, pomegranates, and delicious desserts. High officials and military men have gathered to wish Herod well. Wearing garlands on their heads, the leading men of Galilee toast him with endless cups of wine imported from Italy and Cyprus. Paved in beautiful mosaic and bedecked with large, multicolored tapestries, the palace is filled with musicians, dancers, and storytellers whose only purpose is to amuse and delight.

The occasion is Herod’s birthday. The location is Machaerus, a palatial stone fortress just east of the Dead Sea. Perched high upon a mountaintop, it is surrounded on three sides by deep ravines and boasts a commanding view of the eastern frontier. From its heights, Jerusalem and Jericho can plainly be seen. Like all fortresses, this one has its share of dungeons. Inside one of them, a man is fastened to the wall in chains. He is Herod’s prisoner, a prophet named John.

A wild, unkempt man clad only in camel skin and a leather belt, John the Baptist both fascinates and repels Herod, who brings him out from time to time to hear him preach. The man is so compelling that Herod wonders what it might be like to follow him into the Jordan River so that John can baptize him. But how can he since John has already publicly condemned him, accusing him of committing incest by marrying Herodias, who was both his niece and his half-brother’s wife?

Still, Herod’s sliver of a conscience tells him it would be a crime to kill a man as good as John. Plus, he fears that murdering the prophet will spark an insurrection. So instead of executing John as he might like to do, he lets him languish in prison for most of a year.

But Herodias will not let the matter drop. She despises John for condemning her divorce and remarriage and for doing it so publicly. How dare he threaten and thunder, dragging her name in the dirt, as though he is God? Whenever she speaks of him, Antipas catches a glint of malice in her eye that reminds him of his father of not so blessed memory.

Herod the Great was a man of grand ambitions and abilities. But he was grandly paranoid too. In addition to murdering several of his sons, he put all the baby boys of Bethlehem to death merely on talk of a star and a little child destined to be king. Caesar Augustus once joked that he would rather be Herod’s pig (hus) than his son (huis), because as a nominal Jew, Herod would at least have had some scruples about slaughtering a pig, though he certainly had none about executing members of his own family.

Herodias herself is the granddaughter of Herod the Great and therefore her husband’s niece. Living in the shadow of her grandfather’s monstrous paranoia, she is aware that her own father, grandmother, and several of her uncles were among his many victims. With ten wives, he had plenty of children to fear. But Herodias was not one of them. Instead, she was numbered among his favorite grandchildren. Doting on her, he arranged a marriage with one of his surviving sons, her uncle Herod Philip.

But Philip was landless and crownless, and if Herodias longed for anything, it was for a glittering crown to wear on her head. While she was thinking of how to acquire one, Philip’s half-brother Antipas happened to visit them at their home in Rome. He stayed for days and days and was so smitten by Herodias that he begged her to leave Philip and marry him. Herodias was shameless and clever and would not abandon her husband unless Antipas promised to divorce his wife, a Nabatean princess, who was the daughter of King Aretas IV.

So Herod Antipas destroyed his alliance with Aretas by divorcing his wife, and Herodias abandoned her current uncle-husband to acquire another.

Though she loves him, Herodias thinks Herod Antipas is something of a disappointment. Merely a tetrarch, who rules Galilee and Perea—the land beyond the Jordan—he has not yet managed to grace her brow with a crown. As it happens, Antipas’s territory is the region in which both John and his cousin Jesus can most frequently be found, preaching, teaching, performing wonders, and stirring up trouble.

Like all the Herods, Herodias is a schemer. But her first scheme, to use Herod Antipas as a stepping stone to power, had been openly challenged by John, whose insolence quickly ignited her wrath. So she decided to silence him, if not all at once then in measured steps. She began by pressuring Herod to imprison the popular prophet. Once John was thrown into jail, she waited for an opportune time to finish him off. She pressured Herod, but without results. How is it, she wondered, that even though she is only a woman, she is twice the man her husband is?

Then comes Herod’s birthday celebration, the perfect occasion to complete her scheme. She relies on Salome, the daughter she bore to her first husband, Herod Philip. Dressing her in a costume of glittering silver, she instructs her daughter to perform her most beguiling dance. Herodias has carefully calculated the moment, counting on Salome’s performance to create the perfect climax for her husband’s boisterous birthday party. And she is not disappointed.

With a sultry smile, Salome spins and twirls, extending her arms in a great, expanding circle as she moves across the floor, inviting every man to imagine what it would be like to become her intimate acquaintance. Finally, when she has exhausted every seductive surprise, she comes to rest like a delicate bouquet at Herod’s feet.

“Bravo!” he says, and all his guests rise to applaud her.

“Ask me for whatever you want and I’ll give it, up to half my kingdom!” he declares.

Excusing herself for just one moment, Salome hurries out to consult her mother. “Ask him,” Herodias whispers, “for the head of John the Baptist.”

Returning at once, the young girl appears before Herod and says, “I want you to give me right now the head of John the Baptist on a platter.”

The request dismays Herod. He had not seen this coming. The political climate is not conducive for executing such a man. Plus it is a violation of the law to carry out a sentence or to behead a man without first holding a trial. But he has made a public oath and will not shame himself by rescinding it in front of so many powerful men. Immediately he orders John’s execution.

In a few minutes ’time, while the guests are still murmuring about Salome’s extraordinary dance and her shocking request, the executioner returns. He is holding a large platter on which John’s head rests. He presents it to Salome, who then presents it to her mother, who accepts it with great pleasure.

On hearing of John’s murder, his disciples come and take his body and lay it gently in a tomb.

When Jesus learns of his cousin’s death, he withdraws from the ever-present crowd to be alone and pray. Grieving for John, the best man he has ever known, his own future comes clearly into view.

As the fame of Jesus spreads, people begin to say that he is John the Baptist risen from the dead. Even Herod is haunted by the possibility and has been overheard, saying, “John, the man I beheaded, has been raised from the dead.”

Herodias believes no such nonsense and is haunted by nothing but her continued ambition to one day become a queen. But there is more horror to come. In due time, she will accompany Herod to Jerusalem for the Feast of Passover. She will be present on the day that Jesus, the one they call the Christ, appears before him accused of many crimes.

Later, after John and Jesus have both been executed, one by Herod and the other by Pontius Pilate, now Herod’s bosom friend, she will watch her husband’s armies flee from King Aretas, who is determined to avenge himself on the man who years earlier had divorced his daughter to marry someone else.

Herod Antipas is so thoroughly defeated that many think of his humiliation as divine retribution for beheading John. Still, Herodias pursues her schemes of greatness, this time urging Herod Antipas to go to Rome in order to petition Emperor Caligula to bestow on him a royal crown. But her brother Agrippa is a clever liar who sends a messenger ahead of them accusing Herod of sedition. Stripping him of all his lands and goods, Caligula banishes Herod and Herodias to Gaul, where Herod soon perishes.

Though Herodias lives on, her story fades. We don’t know what becomes of her. Whether her calloused heart led her into yet more wicked schemes or whether it was softened by the loss of everything she ever wanted, we will never know. What we do know is that she was guilty of at least one great act of wickedness, choosing to murder the man who through his powerful preaching turned the hearts of many wayward people back to the God who loved them.

The Takeaway

What might have prevented Herodias from turning toward God and away from her sins? What prevents you from doing the same? Why is power often such a corrupting force even among good people? How have you handled power, whether on a large or small scale, in your own life?

The above excerpt is from Wicked Women of the Bible. Copyright © 2015 by Ann Spangler. Used by permission of Zondervan. www.Zondervan.com. All rights reserved. Taken from pp. 172-176.

Bio: Ann Spangler is an award-winning writer and the author of many bestselling books, including Praying the Names of God, Praying the Names of Jesus, and The One Year Devotions for Women. She’s also coauthor of Women of the Bible and Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus, and the general editor of the Names of God Bible. Ann’s fascination with and love of Scripture have resulted in books that have opened the Bible to a wide range of readers. She and her two daughters live in Grand Rapids, Michigan.