Rogier Boogaard and Arjan van den Os, “The Angel Strikes: The Sennacherib Narrative in 2 Kings 18-19 as a Background to Herod’s Death in Acts 12:20-23, NovT 68 (2026), 45-46.
The nature of Herod’s offense is specified at the end of Acts 12:23: “he had not given glory to God” (οὐκ ἔδωκεν τὴν δόξαν τῷ θεῷ). This statement is puzzling at first, because it was the crowd who engaged in idolatrous worship, not Herod. The reason why Herod is judged, and not the crowd, can be derived from the broader context of Luke-Acts: it is an act of implied self-deification. First, in Luke 4:5–8, the devil asks Jesus to worship him. Jesus responds by saying that God alone should be worshipped (cf. Deut 6:13). Similarly, Peter and John immediately give glory to God after healing a lame man in Acts 3:1–26. The response of the crowd in Acts 3:10 does not imply that the apostles receive divine praise, but they anticipate the possibility. Peter rejects worship of himself again in Acts 10:25–26, after visiting Cornelius. The most explicit rejection of deification can be found in Acts 14:8–20. The people of Lystra worship Paul and Barnabas as gods after a miraculous healing event, but this is instantly shut down by Paul.
The Amateur Exegete 