Acts 12:19-24

¹⁹Then Herod told them all to look everywhere to find him. But they didn’t find him. So Herod judged those 16 soldiers. He asked them some questions, then he told the other soldiers to kill them. After that Herod left Judea country and went to stay for a while in the town called Caesarea.

²⁰At that time Herod was very angry with the people that lived in the towns called Tyre and Sidon. This made a problem for those people. You see, Herod was the boss of Galilee country and those people got all their food from Galilee, and they didn’t want Herod to stop them from getting that food. So some of them went to Herod’s house to talk to him about this problem. At Herod’s house a man called Blastus was one of his important workers, so those men talked to Blastus and said, “Please help us get a chance to talk with Herod. We want to stop all this trouble.” So Blastus got Herod to agree to talk to those people, and Herod told them the day for that talk. On that day Herod put on his special clothes, and he sat in his special seat, to show everyone that he is the big boss of that country. And then he talked to all the people.

²²Those people all wanted to make him happy so they shouted, “This is not a man talking. He is a god.”

²³Herod liked their talk. He didn’t tell them that he is only a man, and that God is the great and powerful one. So then one of God’s angels hit Herod to punish him. That angel got worms to eat the inside of Herod’s body, and he died.

²⁴At the same time the Christians kept on telling everybody about Jesus, so a big mob of people heard God’s word, and a lot of them started to believe in Jesus.