During the trials that led to His crucifixion, Jesus defended Himself to the Jews (Luke 22:66-71) and to Pilate (Luke 23:1-4), but not to Herod, to whom He refused to say a word (Luke 23:6-11). This is because the Sanhedrin and the priests were the legitimate rulers of Israel, and Christians recognized their authority, as Paul makes clear in Acts 23:1-5. The Romans, meanwhile, were the rightful rulers of the world system in which Israel was nestled, inheriting the divine authority originally given to Babylon by God in Jeremiah 27:4-6, then passed down from empire to empire, per Daniel 2 and 7.

Herod the Great, however, had been appointed king of Judea by Rome, not by God. He was also an Edomite, not an Israelite. The rule of the Herods was therefore in violation of Deuteronomy 17:15, which stated that a king of Israel must both be chosen by God and an Israelite. Therefore, Jesus chose not to answer Herod because he was an illegitimate ruler.

Interestingly, the Romans unintentionally acknowledged Jesus as King of Judea by putting an inscription above Him on the cross that read “This is Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews” (Matthew 27:37; Mark 15:26; Luke 23:38; John 19:19). This alarmed His enemies, who protested that Pilate should instead write “He said, ‘I am the King of the Jews,’” but Pilate refused (John 19:20-22).

While the Romans did not have the right to choose who would rule Israel, they could still use their delegated authority to formally recognize God’s choice. Thus, while Pilate was seeking merely to annoy the Jewish religious leaders when he wrote the inscription, he still put Rome’s stamp of approval on Jesus’ reign without realizing it. Jesus thus both died and rose again as the true King of the Jews.