Aretas IV Philopatris

Aretas IV Philopatris ( or, "lover of his people" ) was the King of the Nabataeans from roughly 9 BC to 40 AD.

Aretas' daughter Phasaelis was married to, and divorced from, Herod Antipas. Herod then married Herodias, his stepbrother's wife. It was John the Baptist's opposition to this marriage that led to his beheading. After Aretas received news of the divorce, he invaded the territory of Herod Antipas and defeated his army. Like his predecessors, the king's name as transcribed in Arabic is or , stemming from Harith which means "the collector, provider; plowman; cultivator".

Rise to power

Aretas came to power abruptly in 9 BC in the wake of the sudden death of Obodas II (formerly erroneously identified as Obodas III), without seeking the approval or permission of the Roman Emperor Augustus.

Josephus says of Aretas that he was originally named Aeneas, but took "Aretas" as his throne name. An inscription from Petra suggests he was a member of the royal family, as a descendant of Malichus I.

His full title, first inscribed in Nabataean Aramaic on coins issued in 1 BC, was "Aretas, King of the Nabataeans, Lover of his People." Following her death, he married Shaqilath and there was a gap in the issuing of coins for a few years. When her image was included on the reverse of the coin, it was not a portrait, but of the royal couple together, indicating the unique status Khaldah enjoyed. Antipas married Herodias. According to Christian accounts, it was opposition to this marriage that led to the beheading of John the Baptist. However, the Jewish-Roman historian Josephus depicts John's execution instead as being a preemptive effort to prevent a rebellion.

Aretas invaded Herod Antipas' domain and defeated his army, partly because soldiers from the region of Philip the Tetrarch (a third brother) gave assistance to King Aretas. Josephus does not identify these auxiliary troops (he calls them 'fugitives'), but Moses of Chorene identifies them as being the army of King Abgarus of Edessa. Antipas was able to escape only with the help of Roman forces.

Herod Antipas then appealed to Emperor Tiberius, who dispatched the governor of Syria, Lucius Vitellius the Elder, to attack Aretas. Vitellius gathered his legions and moved southward, stopping in Jerusalem for the passover of AD 37, when news of the emperor's death arrived. The invasion of Nabataea was never completed.

The Christian Apostle Paul says that he had to sneak out of Damascus in a basket through a window in the wall to escape the ethnarch of King Aretas (2 Corinthians 11:32, 33). Proposals that control of Damascus was gained by King Aretas between the death of Herod Philip in 33/34 AD and his death in 40 AD are contradicted by substantial evidence against Aretas controlling the city before 37 AD and many reasons why it could not have been a gift from Caligula between 37 and 40 AD. Most uncertainty stems from whether troops belonging to Aretas actually controlled the city, or if Paul was referring to "the official in control of a Nabataean community in Damascus, and not the city as a whole." Several have proposed that Aretas briefly annexed Damascus after 37 AD.

Aretas IV died in AD 40 and was succeeded by his son Malichus II and daughter Shaqilath II.