In
the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
After Jesus has told a series of parables lambasting the Jewish
leadership for leading the people astray, they seek to entrap Him and
get Him out of their way. Therefore, strange bedfellows come together
for a common cause. Ordinarily, the Pharisees and the Herodians would
never associate. After all, the Pharisees desperately wanted to
maintain Jewish independence so that they could retain their
prerogatives over the people and the Temple. They wished nothing more
than the retreat and demise of their Roman overlords. On the other
hand, the Herodians were extreme political partisans of the house of
Herod Antipas. They were staunch supporters of Rome, mostly in the
hopes of furthering Herod's goal of ruling Israel as king.
However, necessity creates odd bedfellows, and this occasion is no
different. Both of these parties wanted Jesus silenced, so they came
together to this end. They would ask Him about paying taxes to
Caesar. If Jesus said yes, then the people would see their great
hopes of political overthrow dashed and the Pharisees could point to
Jesus as unpatriotic. If He said no, then the Herodians could
denounce Him to Pilate as an enemy of the Emperor and a seditionist.
