Mark 6:17

For Herod St Mark now proceeds more fully than the first Evangelist to relate the circumstances of the murder of the Baptist.

for Herodias" sake During one of his journeys to Rome, Herod Antipas had fallen in with Herodias the wife of his brother Herod Philip, a son of Herod the Great and Mariamne, who was living there as a private person. Herodias was not only the sister-in-law, but the niece of Antipas, and already had a daughter who was grown up. Herod himself had long been married to the daughter of Aretas, Emîr of Arabia Petræa, but this did not prevent him from courting an adulterous alliance with Herodias, and she consented to become his wife, on condition that the daughter of the Arabian prince was divorced. But the latter, suspecting her husband's guilty passion, did not wait to be divorced, and indignantly fled to the castle of Machærus, and thence to her father's rocky fortress at Petra, who forthwith assembled an army to avenge her wrongs, and defeated Herod in a decisive battle (Jos. Ant. Mark 6:1).