Herod the Great

 Some facts about Herod the Great, aka. Herod I, King of the Jews:

Ruins at Caesarea - built by Herod the Great

• King of Judea, Galilee, Iturea, Traconitis from c.40 - 4BC.  He was made ‘King of the Jews’ by the Roman Senate as advised by Mark Anthony and Octavian (who later became Emperor Augustus)
• He undertook vast building projects including the building of Caesarea, the temple, his palace at Masada, and the Herodian
• Though he was a practicing Jew, he was by descent an Edomite.  
• His father was Antipater, a Jew of Idumaean descent, who was appointed procurator of Judaea by Julius Caesar in 47BC.  
• Herod I’s rise to power began when his father appointed him military prefect of Galilee.
• He killed much of his family including a number of his sons and a wife for fear of being displaced from the throne.  
• He was hated by the Jews supposedly for his Edomite heritage and also for his killing of the Hasmonean family (those who he had displaced from the throne), which included his wife Mariamne.
• After 'being mocked of the wise men' who did not return to tell him where Jesus was, he killed all children up to 2 years of age in Bethlehem and the surrounding area when he heard of a rival king of the Jews (Matthew 2v16).  The gospel of Matthew tells us that this fulfills a prophecy in Jeremiah 31v15 "Thus saith the LORD; A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping; Rahel weeping for her children refused to be comforted for her children, because they were not." 

Remains of storerooms from Herod's palace on Masada

“Now there are some who stand amazed at the diversity of Herod’s nature and purposes for when we have respect to his magnificence, and the benefits which he bestowed on all mankind, there is no possibility for even those that had the least respect for him to deny, or, not openly to confess, that he had a nature vastly beneficent: but when anyone looks upon the punishments he inflicted, and the injuries he did not only to his subjects, but to his nearest relations, and takes notice of his severe and unrelenting disposition there, he will be forced to allow that he was brutish, and a stranger to all humanity; insomuch that these men suppose his nature to be different, and sometimes at contradiction with itself; but I am myself of another opinion, and imagine that the occasion of both these sorts of actions was one and the same; for being a man ambitious of honor, and quite overcome by that passion, he was induced to be magnificent, wherever there appeared any hopes of a future memorial, or of reputation at present; and as his expenses were beyond his abilities, he was necessitated to be harsh to his subjects; for the persons on whom he expended his money were so many, that they made him a very bad procurer of it; and because he was conscious that he was hated by those under him, for the injuries he did them, he thought it not an easy thing to amend his offenses, for that was inconvenient for his revenues; he therefore strove on the other side to make their ill will an occasion of his gains.  As to his own court, therefore, if anyone was not very obsequious to him in his language, and would not confess himself to be his slave, or but seem to think of any innovation in his government, he was not able to contain himself, but prosecuted his very kindred and friends, and punished them as if they were enemies; and this wickedness he undertook out of a desire that he might be himself alone honored."

Josephus The Antiquities of the Jews 16.5.4

References

Josephus, The Antiquities of the Jews 

Charles H. Hyer and Gregory A. Hatteberg, 2006, The New Christian Traveler’s Guide to the Holy Land

New Bible Dictionary, 3^rd Ed.