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Real Life Biblical Kings and Other Historic Bible Facts and Figures

Khalid Elhassan April 25, 2025 18 min

Bible - Yul Brynner as the pharaoh in 'The Ten Commandments' — Yul Brynner as the pharaoh in 'The Ten Commandments'. Wikimedia

19. The King Who Executed His Sons

Bible - Herod the Great — Herod the Great. K-Pics

Herod’s children by Mariamne resented the fact that he had ordered their mother put to death, or that he had continued to get it on with her corpse. So they grew up with a fractious relationship with their father. Two in particular, Alexander and Aristobolus, did a poor job of hiding that resentment, and Herod suspected them of plotting against him to avenge their mother. So he imprisoned Alexander in 10 BC, and three years later, had him and his brother Aristobolus charged with treason. Both were convicted, and Herod ordered his sons strangled to death in 7 BC, giving rise to Augustus’ quip that it was better to be Herod’s pig than his son.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.