Aretas (more precisely, Aretas IV Philopatris) was the King of Nabataea, an independent Arabian kingdom whose capital was the magnificent rock-city of Petra. While he never appears in direct interaction with Jesus Christ, his political influence and the actions of his local governor are significant enough to be recorded in the Apostle Paul’s testimony, linking the early church history with the broader Greco-Roman world.
The King of the Nabataeans
Aretas IV reigned from approximately 9 B.C. to A.D. 40, making him a contemporary of both Herod the Great and the beginnings of the Christian movement. The Nabataean kingdom controlled vital trade routes across the Arabian Peninsula, making its king a powerful player in the region, particularly around the city of Damascus.
The mention of Aretas in the New Testament is directly tied to the period immediately following Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus. After his encounter with the risen Lord, Paul spent three years in Arabia and Damascus, preaching the Gospel (Galatians 1:17). This ministry incited such intense opposition that plots were formed to kill him.
The Escape from Damascus
The scriptural reference to Aretas occurs when Paul recounts his dramatic escape from Damascus, which was under the political control of a Nabataean governor (ethnarch) loyal to Aretas at that time:
“In Damascus the governor under Aretas the king kept the city of the Damascenes with a garrison, desirous to apprehend me: But through a window in a basket was I let down by the wall, and escaped his hands.” — 2 Corinthians 11:32-33 (KJV)
This account confirms that the local authority in Damascus—who was actively seeking Paul’s arrest—was not a Roman official or a direct appointee of the Roman Empire, but an ethnarch of King Aretas. This detail helps scholars date the events of Paul’s early ministry, as Aretas is believed to have controlled Damascus during a brief period around A.D. 37-39.
The Conflict with Herod Antipas
A key reason Aretas controlled Damascus was his political and military rivalry with the Herodian dynasty. A major source of this conflict stemmed from the marriage and subsequent divorce between Aretas’s daughter (often called Phasaelis) and Herod Antipas (the ruler who beheaded John the Baptist). When Herod Antipas divorced her to marry his niece Herodias, Aretas launched a military campaign that utterly defeated Herod Antipas’s forces. This defeat was so humiliating that it later led to Herod Antipas’s downfall and exile.
Therefore, the “governor under Aretas the king” was seeking Paul, perhaps not for purely religious reasons, but because Paul was connected to the Jewish communities in Damascus, whom Aretas may have viewed with suspicion due to the ongoing political tensions with the Herods.