“And the Pharisees went forth, and straightway took counsel with the Herodians against him, how they might destroy him.”
Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus — the conspiracy against Jesus' life is mentioned explicitly for the first time in Mark, and it follows immediately after the synagogue healing. The alliance of Pharisees and Herodians is politically strange: the Pharisees were Torah-observant separatists; the Herodians were supporters of the Herodian dynasty and its Roman patronage. They had virtually nothing in common except a shared interest in eliminating Jesus. The plot to kill is the logical conclusion of the watching-for-accusation posture of verse 2 — surveillance has escalated to conspiracy, and the Gospel's passion narrative has been set in motion from chapter 3.
Church Fathers on Mark 3:6
The Pharisees, thinking it a crime that at the word of the Lord the hand which was diseased was restored to a sound state, agreed to make a pretext of the words spoken by our Saviour.
But the soldiers of Herod the king are called Herodians, because a certain new heresy had sprung up, which asserted that Herod was the Christ. For the prophecy of Jacob intimated that when the princes of Judah failed then Christ should come; because therefore in the time of Herod none of the Jewish princes remained, and he, an alien, was the sole ruler, some thought that he was the Christ, and set on foot this heresy. These, therefore, were with the Pharisees trying to kill…
Read all 8 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain
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