Who was Salome in the Bible?

One of the women who witnessed the crucifixion of the Lord, and brought spices to anoint His body. Mark 15:40; Mark 16:1. By comparing Matt. 27:56 with Mark 15:40, it appears that Salome was the wife of Zebedee; and if so, she came with her two sons, James and John, when they asked that they might sit on the right hand and on the left of the Lord in His kingdom. Matt. 20:20; Mark 10:35.

Though not mentioned by name in scripture, this Salome is therein spoken of as the daughter of Herodias (by her first husband, Herod Philip). She danced before Herod Antipas, and, by the request of her guilty mother, asked the head of John the Baptist. She became wife of her uncle Philip, tetrarch of Trachonitis, and afterwards of Aristobulus the king of Chalcis, Mark 6:22-28, etc.

We know more of John than we know of any other author of the Gospels. He was one of the two sons of Zebedee. Zebedee was probably a prosperous fishermen on the shore of lake Galilee and he employed hired servants (Mark 1:19-20). John and James' mother was Salome (Math. 27:55-56; Mark 15:40). She bade the Lord Jesus to have her two sons sit on His right and His left hand in his kingdom (Math. 20:20).

From a comparison of Matt. 27:56 with Mark 15:40, it would appear that the name of the mother of James and John was Salome.

With John, the writer of the Fourth Gospel, we are better acquainted. We know about his parentage, and what secular pursuit he had followed. Matthew's father and Mark's mother we can name; but both of John's parents are introduced to us in the Gospels; and we see them, not just as names, with no other association, but as living people, going about in daily life. Zebedee's name is preserved by all the Evangelists; and Salome, John's mother, comes before us in three of the Gospels, though her name only appears in that by Mark.

Zebedee. — Of Zebedee we learn, it is true, but little. Yet that little is to his credit. He followed the industrial occupation of a fisherman on the lake of Galilee, and lived very likely at Capernaum, in which city Peter, originally a native of Bethsaida (John 1:44), had come to reside (Mark 1:21, 29). A man of some means, seeing that he had hired servants working under him (Mark 1:20), he nevertheless took part personally in the labour of fishing. And when the Lord, as He walked on the shore of the lake, uttered the irresistible words, which made his two sons throw up their secular calling, Zebedee was in the boat with them, all busily engaged in mending their nets. Few and simple, surely, were the words of Christ, and without any promise of temporal reward connected with them. Yet they were inducement enough. For straightway James and John left their father, the hired servants, the boat, and their nets, and followed the Lord. Apparently Zebedee was quite satisfied at their immediate compliance with the call of Christ. We read of no word of complaint or of expostulation. He continued his occupation, not called to forsake it as they were, whilst his two sons commenced that career, which will lead them to sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. Thus far have we any record about Zebedee. A quiet and an industrious man we must believe him to have been, but who not unlikely had departed this life before Salome stood by her sorrowing sister at the foot of the cross.

Salome. — Of her we must now speak. Comparing Mark 15:40 with John 19:25, we conclude that she was the virgin's sister. Her two sons, therefore, were first cousins to the Lord. As the wife of Zebedee, she had temporal resources at her command, beyond doubtless those possessed by her sister the virgin Mary. For we find her forming one of that female band, which ministered to the Lord when He was in Galilee (Mark 15:41). The first occasion, however, on which she is personally mentioned, and then as the mother of Zebedee's children, was, when she approached Christ with her two sons in the presence of the other Apostles, and asked for James and John places of special honour by His side in His kingdom. From Matthew's Gospel (20:20-21), it appears that she was the speaker on that occasion, though the Lord addressed His answer directly to her sons. Graciously asking her what she desired, as she approached and made obeisance to Him, full liberty she obtained to prefer her request. Remembering her relationship to the Lord's mother, and that she was, as such, the Lord's aunt, her request, viewed in the light of nature, was not so extraordinary as it might otherwise have seemed; and it explains to us, how she could have been the speaker on that occasion. Lacking in spiritual perception she surely was to have asked it; but a mother's desire for her children prompted it, and her relation to the Lord after the order of nature might have encouraged her to prefer it.

A heart for Christ, however, she certainly had. Ministering to Him in Galilee, she followed Him to Jerusalem, and was one of the little company which stood close by the cross, and must have witnessed all that went on. And amid the utterances from His lips when on the cross, she must have heard those words addressed to her sister and to her son (John 19:26-27), commending the sorrowing mother to the care of John. Then, too, doubtless she led away from that spot the Virgin, her sister, when all was over, but before the hasty burial took place; for she was not with Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, when they watched the loving service of Joseph and of Nicodemus; though after the Sabbath was past she was busy, with Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joses, in buying sweet spices, wherewith to anoint the Lord's body on the morrow. That morrow, anxiously, no doubt, awaited by them, dawned, and very early on the first day of the week, at sunrise, Salome was off to the sepulchre with her companions (Mark 16:1-2), carrying with them the spices which they had prepared.

That service was not needed. The stone had been rolled away. The tomb was empty of its occupant. The Lord was risen. Service, the last sad service to the dead, Salome and her companions had contemplated. Service of a very different character was to be entrusted to them, and that too by the risen Lord Himself! A dead Christ they had expected to find. A living, risen Christ they were to meet, and their constancy, shown by their errand to the tomb, was to have its reward in their bearing to the weeping disciples the joyful news of their Lord's resurrection (Matt. 28:10). And we may be sure that Salome did not forget to acquaint her sister with that which they had found, what they had heard from the angels, and whom they had seen in the way. Those godly women, many of whom are unknown to fame, reaped, when in their path of obedience, a rich blessing indeed. The Lord knew where to find them, though they could not have found Him. That spot outside the city, where He met them, must have been well remembered by that faithful band. Which of them, indeed, to the day of their death could ever have forgotten it? To us moderns it is unknown. It was not the mind of the Spirit to foster a reverence for holy places, as connected with Christianity. Neither the manger at Bethlehem, nor the house at Capernaum, nor the upper room at Jerusalem, nor even the actual place of the Crucifixion outside the city, can as yet be identified with certainty.

Henceforth Salome, with the other women in the Gospels, disappears from the pages of Holy Writ, though we gather from Acts 1 that they all continued with one accord with the Apostles and other brethren in the upper room, waiting for the outpouring of the Spirit, at which they must have been present, and in which they also shared. Personal ministry to Christ had been the service assigned to them. Hence with His departure they ceased to figure in the inspired history. Were they from that time forgotten? No. True service for Christ is never forgotten; and these women are illustrations of it. For it was years after the Lord's death, that the Spirit of God, by the pens of the Evangelists, embalmed their names in the Scriptures, as sharing in imperishable remembrance.

All the Evangelists tell us of a company of women that beheld from afar the tragic scene of the cross. Matthew says that "many women were there beholding afar off," and he mentions some of them by name: "Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedee's children" (Matt. 27:55-56). Mark mentions the two Marys and a third called Salome (Mark 15:40). Luke mentions only the company; and John tells us that (probably at the very close when the Lord was about to "give up," or "dismiss, His spirit"), there stood by the cross of Jesus His mother, and His mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleopas, and Mary Magdalene. These women with others from Galilee, faithful to the last, stood beholding from afar, filled with sorrow, while powerless to help, or in any way to hinder the awful crime that was being committed before their eyes. They saw Him die, as the centurion on duty also did, and was convicted by this closing scene.

Mark 15:40. “There were also women looking on afar off; among whom was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the less and of Joses, and Salome.” Here we find the Virgin Mary’s name is second to Mary Magdalene’s first. Further she is not described as the mother of our Lord, but of James and Joses. and Salome (see Mark 6:3). The Romish Church denies that the Virgin Mary had other children than our Lord, but Scripture states it plainly. The supernatural did not set aside the natural.

This name occurs but once, John 19:25: it is really 'Clopas;' the word 'wife' which is added in the A.V. is probably correct. By comparing together the following passages, Matt. 27:56, 61; Matt. 28:1; Mark 15:40, 47; Mark 16:1; and Luke 24:10, it appears probable that 'the other Mary,' and 'Mary the mother of James (or James the less) and Joses' allude to the same person, and she may have been the wife of Clopas. In John 19:25 this Mary is said to be the sister of the Lord's mother, if we allow the word 'and' to separate the persons, which is the most obvious sense; and it is natural that as this is the only place where we read of the Lord's mother having a sister, it should say who she was. Thus there would be three Marys mentioned in the verse, and not four. That the Lord's mother should have a sister also called Mary may appear improbable, but the MSS vary, and there may have been a slight difference, as in the two modern names of Mary and Maria.

So John started life with a bit of a handicap. He was the son of Zebedee and his mother is also referred to in several places. If you compare the accounts of the women who stood at the cross of the Lord Jesus in the Gospels of John and Mark there is real reason to believe that his mother's name was Salome and that she was one of the women there. John's Gospel gives us three names of women at the cross and mentions one to be the sister of Mary the mother of the Lord Jesus. Mark's Gospel mentions Salome as one of the women and it would be strange if two sisters each had the first name Mary which would be the only other way to understand the reference in John if Salome is not this one, but if Salome is indeed the mother of James and John then she is also the sister of Mary, the mother of the Lord Jesus, so that humanly speaking it may well be that the apostle John was a half-cousin to the Lord Jesus. I just mention this in passing. It is not that we want to build on this, because Scripture does not build on it, but it is interesting to see the connection.

351 John 19:26. — Most commentators take Mary, wife of Cleopas, as sister of the Lord's mother, but Bengel, Meyer, Alford, Norris, Weiss, Mayor and Zahn regard Salome as sister of the Lord's mother (Cf. Matt. 27:56 and Mark 15:40), so making four women. According to their view, the Evangelist and his brother James would be cousins of our Lord.