But when Herod heard, he said, “It is John, whom I beheaded. He has risen from the dead.”
Herod’s words express the condemning voice of conscience. He could not calmly hear about Jesus, because in his memory there was always the sin of the murder of John the Baptist. His mind returns to the place where he silenced the voice of truth with violence. When a person rejects a divine warning, afterward his conscience can become a judge that testifies without ceasing. He is afraid not of John’s biological return, but of the exposure of his sin. Thus, this verse shows that sin committed against the truth does not fade easily. It pursues a person if there is no repentance. Herod was a king before people, but he remained a slave before his conscience.