Salome’s Whispered “Me Too”

Mt. 14:1-14

“Then during the celebration of Herod’s birthday, the daughter of Herodias danced for them…Prompted by her mother, she said, ‘Give me the head of John the Baptizer on a platter.'”

Herodias’ Daughter’s #MeToo

One day I read this familiar passage and with the Spirit’s help, I realized that Herodias’ daughter was a victim of abuse.

This floored me. Medieval artists had helped forge my lens for seeing her as “the personification of the lascivious woman” as Wikipedia puts it. (The historian Josephus calls her Salome).

The paintings began in the 16th century. See Titian, 1515:

Also, the western male imagination had come up with The Dance of the Seven Veils that Salome performed (see Oscar Wilde’s 1891 French play Salome and Flaubert’s Herodias).

The image of the sexualized young murderess emerges with every seemingly unbiased reading of this passage in Matthew (as well as the similar one in Mark).

So, I assumed the girl was in on the treachery, with her mother and Herod.

But Herodias’ adolescent daughter likely had a different story. And her story matters because yours does and mine does. We can find ourselves in so many places in the Bible we never considered, when we take off old lenses that make women and girls invisible.

The Part We Know

First, let’s review the part of her story we know about from the Bible (Mt. 14:1-14 and Mark 6:17-27). Matthew tells us that when the tetrarch Herod heard that Jesus went about healing people, Herod declared Jesus was actually John the Baptist resurrected.

Then, Matthew tells this story about John’s death: Herod had John the Baptist tied up and thrown into prison for criticizing Herod. John had said it was wrong of Herod to marry his brother’s wife. Herod preferred to kill John and not just imprison him, but he knew the people loved John and would be angry.

Herod had an opportunity to bring about John’s death, however, at his birthday party. His new stepdaughter danced for him and his friends. He blurted out in front of his friends on oath that he would give Salome whatever she wanted because she pleased him so much. Herodias’ daughter then told her mother about this offer.

Herodias put these words in her daughter’s mouth: “Give me the head of John the Baptist on a platter.” Despite Herod’s distress about this request, the head was given to Herodias’ daughter, who passed it on to her mother. John’s disciples found the body and buried it.

The Dance of the Daughter

She was hardly a dissident daughter, like the title of Sue Monk Kidd’s memoir. Nor could she be. Salome was obedient to her mother and stepfather who wanted her to dance for his birthday party.

Though she unsurprisingly did as she was told, Salome likely felt the problems with this arrangement.

One, her biological father was Herod’s own half-brother, Philip. She had to leave Philip behind when she and her mother moved to the palace to live with her Uncle Herod.

Assuming Philip was a decent-enough dad, how angry and grieved must Salome have felt about this? And Herod was now her stepfather, like it or not.

And What About the Mother?

Now, did Herodias, the mother of Salome, have a choice about leaving Philip and moving in with Herod? This is another important question to ask, even though her request for John’s head implies that she was happy with the current marital situation. She wanted no interference or criticism from John the Baptist.

History tells us Herodias had moved up in the world by leaving Herod Phillip, who lived as a citizen and not as royalty due to being written out of the royal succession by his father. We also know that Herodias later influenced Herod to vie for the title “King,” but this led to his banishment in 39 A.D. This historical tidbit confirms a desire for power on her part that superseded everything.

Herodias had a tragic childhood, twice. This should help us see her more clearly, too. Her grandfather (Herod the Great) had killed her father (Aristobulus IV). Then after Herodias’ mother (Berenice) remarried, Herod had him (Theudias) executed for conspiring against him. So, two dads dead at the hand of her grandfather. Herod the Great then betrothed her to his own son, her half uncle, Herod II (known as Philip in this passage), whom he eventually wrote out of his will. Powerless again, from her perspective. So, her merciless quest for a new position in life strikes me as unsurprising.

Most women in Bible times lived their lives subserviently. Herodias was different, as she started out in a royal family. But, as we saw in looking at David and Bathsheba, so often women were chosen by royalty for an adulterous relationship rather than it being a mutual choice. Therefore, I wanted to ask the question about Herodias–did she choose or did someone choose for her?

But in this case, Salome’s mother was in charge. She would never be the loser again. So, she repeated the sins of her grandfather by using power to harm, even at her daughter’s expense.

Now back to reflecting on Salome’s story.

Awkward

The second problem Salome may have had with the situation is that she had known Herod for years as an uncle. She was asked to dance for him and his drinking buddies at his birthday party. She obeyed, but how awkward and embarrassing would it be to be viewed sexually by her drunk Uncle Herod, now her stepfather. She “pleased him so much that he promised on oath to give her whatever she asked” (Mt. 14:7).

The average reader may assume she tried to dance sensuously out of her own lascivious nature, but my guess is, this was hardly a comfortable situation for a teenage girl pressured to perform for her intoxicated powerful stepfather who used to be her uncle.

The third problem Salome likely had with this situation was she was made to show off not only for her stepfather, but also for all the men he had invited to his birthday banquet (probably local and regional leaders loyal to his government). Maybe she liked the attention, but she also may have felt afraid and uncertain of what might happen.

The wine flowed freely, no doubt, as well as their pleasure in watching her. The women, as well as her mother, may have dined in a separate room. If so, she was the only female in a room of drinking adult men whose eyes were on her. That is, until Herod’s offer of “anything you want,” and says Mark’s gospel, “even up to half my kingdom,” after which she found her mother to report this turn of events.

What should she ask for? I imagine the girl’s imagination wandered to dresses or parties or gardens or pets or sweets, unless she already knew what her rather dastardly mother would say.

Yes, Mommy Dearest

With Herod’s dramatic drunken oath, her mother made her request something gruesome and morally revolting, worthy of the worst of today’s horror movies. Her own desires quickly evaporated as she fell into line and said what she was told to say.

Because the request to “give me the head of John the Baptist on a platter” was made in her own voice (though actually her mother’s), the beheaders did just that: “The head was brought in on a platter and given to the young woman, who carried it to her mother” (14:11).

Even Salome’s voice was hijacked. Then she was physically forced to receive and carry a holy man’s bloody head, both frightening her and making her instantly unclean in Jewish law.

That is guaranteed PTSD in any time in history. The girl Salome must have been shaped in some way by this horrific event as she grew older.

A Still Untold Story of Child Abuse

Not even today have Biblical scholars recognized Herodias’ daughter as a victim of sexual and emotional abuse.  John the Baptist and Jesus, as well as wicked Herod and Herodias, took the spotlight. But the daughter of Herodias hasn’t mattered.

The IVP Bible Background Commentary says that “she may be no older than twelve or fourteen…it is possible she is even slightly younger.” (F. Scott Spencer notes that the Greek word (korasion) means “little girl.”)

But then the authors of the commentary highlight Herod’s sexual immorality: “on any reading, Herod’s vulgarity is perverse; after taking his brother’s wife (cf. Lev 20:21), he lusts after his wife’s daughter (cf. Lev 20:14).” The authors note the similarity between this situation and the one in Esther, and add: “though this girl’s request is far less noble than Esther’s.”

They miss, of course, “this girl’s” powerlessness in the situation to do anything other than what she did.

Invisible Among Bible Women

So few authors on Bible women even include her, which reflects again how we have been conditioned to not see her. Author Lindsay Hardin Freeman does include Salome in her book, Bible Women. Freeman does use her imagination to wonder about Salome.

She gives three possibilities for Salome’s motives. Freeman says either “Salome is a precocious little girl pleasing her mother, dancing to entertain her stepfather…unaware of the distress between John the Baptist and her parents” or “she dances provocatively, shedding one veil after another” or “Mother planned the event accurately gauging what her husband’s response would be.”

Those are actually good starting points for thinking about Salome, as two of the suggestions go outside the usual bounds of seeing her as the young amoral sex-fiend. She was surely trying to please her mother who asked her to dance for Herod. Salome may have been unaware of the issue of John the Baptist at first; we don’t know.

But did she strip off veils to enjoy dancing naked for married old men? I think this article is leading us to see how unlikely that historical assumption is.

Seeing Ourselves in the Bible’s Women

Of the last possibility Freeman lists, scholar F. Scott Spencer points out that there is no evidence that John’s murder was anything but opportunistic on Herodias’ part. She was bad, but not that bad.

Spencer is one more Bible scholar who understates Salome’s plight with her mother. In fact, he implicates Salome with as much guilt as her mother, saying, “There is no way to deny or downplay the two females’ role in this scenario.”

The obvious facts of child abuse by both mother and stepfather remains unexplored, until now. Yet, power dynamics must always come to the fore when looking at the motives of women in the Bible, and young girls, especially.

May we use new, more sympathetic lenses for all Bible girls and women even today as we read. Then we might find ourselves in these ancient pages in ways we never imagined possible, as we hear their “me too” whispered to us through the centuries.