Hyrcanus into his power, and Herod barely escaped. Phasael seems to have lacked the Idumean audacity; he killed himself in his prison. Poor old Hyrcanus had his ears cut off――a hard fate for the gentle, inoffensive old man. But the hope of Antigonus was not only an Asmonean restoration, but to unite and renew in his own person the offices of priest and king. No mutilated priest might stand at God’s altar, so Hyrcanus, by having his ears cut off, was as effectually put out of his nephew’s way as if he had been put to death. Possibly Hyrcanus, if he had been consulted, might have preferred the latter fate as the more merciful. He had it in the end. The triumph of Antigonus, great as it was while it lasted, lasted only a very little while. The Roman and his legions were more than a match for the Asmonean prince. Mark Antony took Jerusalem at last (37 B.C.), exactly twenty-six years, to the day, after Pompey’s capture of the city. Antigonus was put to death, and Herod the Idumean was proclaimed King of Judea. CHAPTER VIII. REIGN OF HEROD. =1. Antipater’s ‘Desire’ fulfilled.=――In the seventy-eighth Psalm there is a sort of dramatic summary given of some of the early experiences of the Israelites. We are told the story of the sins and sorrows in the wilderness, of ‘the fire that was kindled against Jacob,’ and ‘the anger that came up against Israel.’ Presently we come upon the verse, ‘And He gave them their own desire.’ If we did not know the sequel, how gladly we should stop at this happy-sounding little verse, thinking, ‘Now surely their troubles are over; here is peace at last for those grumbling wayfarers, since God has granted them their own desires.’ But we do know. The whole story is before us, not spelled out bit by bit, as it was with them. And we know that the gift of their own desire was just the worst of all their troubles. The moral is easy to see, if a little difficult to apply. All of us, now and then, have greedy longings for ‘flesh in the wilderness.’ We cry for it, and pray for it, with eager angry passion. And sometimes we are given our ‘desire,’ and allowed to eat to the full of the unwholesome food we crave. It was so with Antipater. He had longed to found a royal house, and had schemed and sinned to that end. He was ‘granted his desire.’ His son Herod was now King of Judea, and of all the rightful family none were left but the old, deaf Hyrcanus and a young lad named Aristobulus, the brother of Herod’s wife Mariamne.