but Herod the tetrarch, being reproved by him for Herodias, his brother's{TR reads "brother Philip's instead of brother's"} wife, and for all the evil things which Herod had done,

 The Jews had not the slightest doubt that in God's economy there was a favoured nation clause. They held that God would judge other nations with one standard but the Jews with another. They, in fact, held that a man was safe from judgment simply in virtue of the fact that he was a Jew. A son of Abraham was exempt from judgment. John told them that racial privilege meant nothing; that life, not lineage, was God's standard of judgment. 