Acts 25:13

Now when certain days were passed, Agrippa the king and Bernice arrived at Caesarea, and saluted Festus.

Agrippa the king ... In this ruler, the last of the Herodian dynasty appeared; and with his death in 100 A.D., the sordid record of the whole infamous family ended. He and his sister Bernice had another sister Drusilla (see under Acts 24:24), all of them being great-grandchildren of Herod the Great who had sought to murder the Christ in his infant cradle. We shall note these characters a bit further.

AGRIPPA AND BERNICE

Agrippa II was the son of Agrippa I who was the son of Aristobulus the son of Herod the Great by Mariamne the Maccabean princess, thus being a fourth generation of the Herods whose names figure so prominently in the New Testament. He was appointed governor of Chalcis in A.D. 48 by Claudius, but traded that position for a kingship over the tetrarchy of Philip in A.D. 54. In the great war (66 to 70 A.D.), he sided with the Romans; and after the war was confirmed in his kingdom, living until A.D. 100.

When Bernice (his sister) was only sixteen, and already twice married, first to Alexander of Alexandria and then to her uncle Herod, king of Chalcis, who died in A.D. 48, she moved in with her brother Agrippa I. Juvenal, the Roman satirist, called her "Agrippa's incestuous sister"[9] and after a brief marriage she evidently made to quiet rumors of her relationship to her brother, she again took up residence with him at Caesarea Philippi. She was later the mistress of both Vespasian and his son Titus; and the latter would have married her except for popular outrage. She and her brother were the "royalty" who heard Paul on this occasion.[10]

Thus, in these two chapters, three of the great-grandchildren of Herod the Great "adorn" the pages of the New Testament!

Saluted Festus ... Some have supposed that as "a king" Agrippa outranked Festus, but this is not the case. Wesley was correct in the comment that "The visit here was a compliment paid by the vassal king to the representative of Rome."[11] How long they stayed in Caesarea is not known, but it was evidently quite a while.

[9] Jack P. Lewis, Historical Backgrounds of Bible History (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1971), pp. 164-166.

[10] Flavius Josephus, Antiquities and Wars of the Jews, translated by William Whiston (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston), p. 594.

[11] John Wesley, op. cit., in loco.