Suicide Of Judas! !

Matthew 27:1-10

Matthew 27:1-10; Acts 1:18-19

In England and Wales, the suicide rate was 11.4 deaths per 100,000 people in 2023, an increase from the previous year. In USA the suicide rate was 15.3 death per 100,000 people in 2023. In India the suicide rate was 13.9 death per 100,000 people in 2023.

We may estimate as high as twice the number of reported suicides would be the actual number. Ask the inevitable question: Why do people murder themselves? People who analyse human behaviour come up with five reasons.

1. Some people kill themselves for what we could call

retaliation. They want to get back at someone. They are angry and they want to hurt someone, and they think the best way to hurt someone is to kill themselves. They will inflict a hurt on someone from which that person can never recover.

2. People kill themselves is what we could call reunion. This particularly is common among those who kill themselves of older age. They have lost their life partner, someone very dear to them, someone on whom they have a great amount of dependence. Rather than try to live alone, they take their life to join that person.

3. Some people take their lives out of what we could call

rebirth. They are tired of the way it is in this life, and they would like to get another shot at it. They believe maybe in reincarnation. They believe maybe there’s another world somewhere. It would be better than the one here, and they would like to try all over again and hope for a better fate.

4. Because of psychologists have called retroflex. Someone is very angry and very mad at someone else, but they can’t kill someone else, so they kill themselves out of frustration. Like the man who killed himself, committing his own suicide, because there was one Nazi war criminal he knew was alive and wasn’t yet discovered. Strange and bizarre quirk and twist of his own thinking, he took his own life.

5. Retribution. People take their lives to inflict upon themselves a severe punishment which they believe they should receive. They have sinned. They imagine their guilt to be irremediable. There is no remedy for it.

They imagine that there is no way they can come out from under the anxiety and the pressure of their own conscience. Because they feel themselves so guilty and so wrong and they lose all sense of self-value and self-worth, their self-image is devastated, they are total failures overwhelmed by guilt, they kill themselves as an ultimate punishment, seeing death self- inflicted to deal with their own guilt.

A guilt-ridden conscience then probably is a dominant factor in many suicides. It may not be the only factor, but it is a dominant factor in many suicides. The guilt that a person feels may be real guilt because of real sin and real wrong and real evil, or it may be artificial.

It may be unreal. It may be inflicted upon them by unrealistic standards established on them by their parents or peers or even by their own desires. We have two classic suicides in the Scripture that are illustrations of this.

One in the Old Testament and one in the New. In fact, they are really the only suicides in Scripture.

It is true that two others we know killed themselves, Saul and his armour bearer, but that was a little bit different. They were in the middle of a battle. They were being defeated. Saul didn’t want himself captured by his enemy. He didn’t want the enemy to have the privilege of dismembering him or doing some atrocity against him, and so he took his own life, in a sense, as a self- inflicted wound during a battle to prevent his enemy from gaining his ends, and his armour bearer died with him.

But in the classic definition of suicide, there are two in Scripture one in the Old and one in the New. The Old Testament suicide is Ahithophel who betrayed David. The New Testament one is Judas who betrayed Jesus Christ.

In both cases, they took their lives out of the guilt of betraying an innocent person. Their plans going array, everything falling apart, and unable to deal with the anxiety that came about because of it all, they took their own lives.

• We can read about Ahithophel in 2 Samuel 17.
• We see the suicide of Judas what we just read in Matthew 27.

We come then to this portion of Scripture that treats the suicide of Judas Iscariot. The man with the most promise, the man in the greatest place of potential blessing, the man who becomes, because of his great privilege, the greatest human tragedy who ever lived and died.

V 5, Judas killed hanged himself. Scripture obviously would infer in the case of Judas and in the case of Ahithophel, of course, that suicide was an act of an evil and deranged mind and is not a viable solution. It is a crime against God.

It is a crime against self. Suicide is unacceptable. It is to rebelliously usurp sovereignty. It is to take a prerogative on oneself that belongs only to God who gives life and takes life. It is an act of sin. It is an act of unbelief.

It is an act of lack of trust in the wisdom, purpose, and plan of God.

Even though it is a sin and a violation of the sixth commandment, “You shalt not murder,” and even though it is a violation of the sovereignty of God and a rebellious act against Him and evidence of a lack of faith and trust, frankly in the case of Judas it seems to me to have been inevitable.

If suicide can be and often is the result of unrelieved guilt, then we can understand the suicide of Judas because, his guilt was so monstrous. If guilt less than his can bring about suicide, then guilt at the level of his could surely do it. For he committed the most enormous crime that any man ever committed, for he betrayed the most innocent man, the only perfect man that ever lived.

Judas only had two choices.

• Either he could go to Jesus Christ whom he had betrayed and seek to make it right,
• Or he could eliminate himself.

There were only two ways to deal with his guilt. It either had to be

• forgiveness or
• self-destruction.

Judas opted for self-destruction.

Matthew takes us away from the trial of Christ for a moment to follow the story of Judas to its very tragic end. Matthew’s primary purpose in giving us the story of Judas was not to just tell us the story of Judas. It was to demonstrate the innocence, the purity, and the perfection and majesty of Jesus Christ.

As always, Matthew is presenting Christ, the King. Even in this scene Jesus Christ is exalted against the evil backdrop of the horrible death of Judas. Now Matthew does this in a series of contrasts. A contrast that he has been making between the unjust leaders and the sinless Lord.

As we have been following the first two phases of the Jewish trial of Christ, we have been made very much aware of the illegality, the injustice, and the immorality of the trial. There has been no legitimate accusation against Jesus.

He has been permitted no defence. There were false witnesses called and bribed to give false testimony. Judas was bribed to be a traitor. The trial was held in the middle of the night, which was forbidden, in the house of Caiaphas.

It was to be in the daytime in the judgment hall. Every single statute which accommodated their justice system was violated. Despite all the silent majestic Christ stands innocent. They can come up with absolutely nothing.

With all the means that they have as evil men who are energized by Satan and his demon hosts, Satan, and the demons cannot come up with one viable testimony to Jesus Christ that could bring against Him an accusation of evil.

When all the worst that earth and hell can do has been done, Jesus still stands without rebuke. A tremendous testimony to the sinlessness of Jesus Christ. Hell would want the world to believe Him to be sinful. The world of evil couldn’t accomplish that.

Finally, they decide to kill Him for blasphemy. His blasphemy, He said He was the Messiah, the Son of God, and that wasn’t blasphemy, but the truth. The contrast between the two paints the majesty of Jesus so beautifully and clearly.

Already phase I and II of the Jewish trial have occurred between 1:00 and 3:00 in the morning. Since that time, Jesus has been a bound prisoner in the house of Caiaphas. He has been waiting there until the dawn.

• They want to have another trial at the dawn, just a few minutes long, so they can put a appearance of legality over their illegal trial.
• They know the law requires it be held in the daytime.
• They know it requires it be held in the judgment hall.
• Hence, they wait till dawn to have a very quick trial in the judgment hall right at sunrise.
• They did early morning before the people arise and get involved, because the people were attracted to Jesus Christ and might become a problem.

V 1, When morning came, all the chief priests and elders of the people plotted against Jesus to put Him to death. Wednesday early morning sunrise. Their verdict already rendered before the trial. Phases I and II already held between 1:00 am and 3:00 am in the morning.

They all came together. Mark says the whole Sanhedrin. Luke says they led Him into their counsel.

Luke is saying there is that this time they had it in their counsel, into their counsel He went in the judgment hall. They were trying to legalize the thing by having it in the right place at the right time, though the verdict was already decided.

They passed a resolution. They took a vote, a formal vote, so it would appear to be a legal trial to put Jesus to death. Their vote was against Him. The vote was unanimous or near unanimous. We know that there was one member, Joseph of Arimathea who consented not to the death of Christ. But apart from him, we know of no other dissent.

It was their desire to kill Jesus! The problem was they had no right to murder because they were under Roman occupation. Only the Romans had the right of execution.

John 18:31, Then Pilate said to them, “You take Him and judge Him according to your law.” Therefore the Jews said to him, “It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death,”

By their own admission they had no right to do what they now decided must be done. Therefore, they had to take Jesus to the Roman authorities. V 2, And when they had bound Him, they led Him away and delivered Him to Pontius Pilate the governor.

Pontius Pilate had been assigned to rule that region. His headquarters was down at the seashore at Caesarea. He was in Jerusalem now because it was the Passover and they increased the ranks of troops. There was always the potential of a problem.

Pilate was staying in Fort Antonia, which was very near the temple ground, closer to the house of Caiaphas east of the city by the Mount of Olives. Pilate was in his place there. They bound Jesus after they had made their final verdict and led Him away to deliver Him to Pontius Pilate.

Pilate was governor of that area from 26- 36 A.D. right through the ministry and death of Christ. He is going to play a large picture. The Jewish trial then is over. As you come to verse 2, you begin the Roman trial. The religious ecclesiastical trial is over.

Now comes the Roman secular trial. They have got to decide whether it’s in fact legitimate for them to execute this man whom the Jews want dead. Now what is a marvellous thing about this Jewish trial that has just ended is that after all that they could do, all night long and all the resources at their disposal, they came up with no accusation that was legitimate against Christ.

Therefore, He shines in all His glory and all His beauty, and they are the ugly ones. They are the liars, bribers, and murderers who kill the innocent Son of God to preserve their own sin. Jewish law required that when a verdict of death was put upon a person, it couldn’t come about until the third day. The day of the decision, a day in between and the third day they could be executed.

From the time of the decision until the actual execution, the Sanhedrin or council was required to stay seated in session, and they remained in session so that at any time someone with new evidence, with new information could come back to them. Bring that new information to them, tell them they knew now something that needed to be brought into the case.

They were obligated then to bring the prisoner back, retry the case based on new evidence. That was a protection against the hasty execution of someone who might be innocent. The ones who were found to be false witnesses, who sought a person’s death through their false testimony were to pay with their own death.

Deuteronomy 16:16-19, the false witness who seeks a certain punishment for a person receives the punishment he falsely seeks.

The unjust leaders should have been in session, but instead they are all involved in this rabble mob leading Jesus to Pilate. They have left their place. They continue their injustice. They continue the illegal function.

The contrast is obvious between the unjust leaders and the sinless Lord. Another contrast between the guilty Judas and the innocent Jesus. A powerful and dramatic scene. The Holy Spirit take the guilt of Judas and this whole ugly scene and use it to portray the innocence of Jesus Christ.

V 3, Then Judas, His betrayer, seeing that He had been condemned, was remorseful and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, “Then” is when they had bound Him and led Him away and delivered Him to Pontius Pilate.

At the very time Jesus was being led to Pilate, “Then Judas, the betrayer” – that becomes his title, the one who betrayed him. “Jesus was condemned” A very strong word, katakrinō condemned to judgment. Judas saw with his eye. Judas must have been lingering around. Now when he was leading the parade of soldiers and priests into the garden to kiss Jesus and take Him captive, he probably followed with that crowd right out of that garden, down the Mount of Olives, up into the region of the high priest’s house.

• We don’t know whether he went all the way inside, like John did and Peter did, or whether he was left outside. We have no knowledge.
• We don’t know whether he went in to be a witness against Christ.
• We don’t know anything about that.

We just see him here as Jesus is transported from the Jewish trial to the place of Pilate. In that process, Judas who betrayed Him saw Jesus was condemned.

He had a visual experience of Jesus tied up, bound, being taken to Pilate. Whether he saw Him leaving the judgment hall in transit or having arrived at the place of Pilate in Fort Antonia, we don’t know. But there he is.

Just as when Peter saw Jesus and Jesus saw Peter, he was literally devastated in the sight of Jesus and overcome with his own sinfulness. Judas too has the same reaction. Seeing Jesus condemned tears Judas to the very core.

seeing that He had been condemned, was remorseful Judas felt sad, or he felt remorse. He felt pain. The whole scene is more than his sorted soul can handle. It is more than his crippled conscience, his money-hungry mind can deal with. He is feeling the pain of guilt, and the pain is agonizing and excruciating and paralyzing.

Because he knows that what he has done is evil.

Why did he feel bad?

Was it the fear of men? No, it wasn’t the fear of men.

What did he have to fear from men? They would have patted him on the back.

They would have congratulated him. He was doing for them what they wanted done. It wasn’t the fear of man. Maybe it was the fear of God. I don’t think it was the fear of God either. If he was feeling the fear of God, he would have gone to God to try to resolve it.

Basically, what he felt was simply the essential wrongness of what he did. It is to say that built into every human soul, no matter how sinful, how depraved, how vile, and how unconscionable, there is still built into them a sense of wrongness. An innate understanding of the essential evil of a certain deed.

When we look at a man like Judas and we say no man could be more evil than that man. How evil must a man be to spend three years with Jesus Christ and then wind up betraying Him? Denying the reality of all the miracles as to their logical conclusion in his mind,

• rejecting the deity of Jesus Christ,
• rejecting His love, mercy, grace, kindness, compassion, power,
• totally unbelieving,
• no faith in Christ as the Son of God,

• no faith in Him as the Saviour.

After three intimate years with Him, a man who not only showed the depth of his sin by his continual rejection of the presence of Christ. “One of you is a devil,” and the Lord had him in mind. Jesus said about him what He never said about anyone else in Scripture, “Satan having entered into Judas.”

Judas was Satan-possessed. He is called a devil. He showed the kind of sinfulness that cannot even be broken by the intimate presence of the Son of God Himself over three years. This is a wretched sinful man. This is a man deeply trapped in the darkness and blackness of his own evil soul.

Yet it is an amazing thing to note that though he is so profoundly evil, he cannot escape the divinely designed internal mechanisms of guilt that ring the bells that warn a man of impending hell. Judas feels guilt. God has built even into the worst of sinners the sense of wrong, the sense of evil that sets off the alarm system. That is God’s gift to man to hold him back from evil and its ultimate end, eternal hell.

Even the devil himself indwelling him, even the demons at the apex of their activity, even sin, when its reached its highpoint, can’t cancel out God’s warning system. We can be grateful for that warning system because if we are Christians, once it drove us to Christ.

Judas is hit by guilt. The word used here is metamelomai, which means to feel sorry, to feel sad, to wish it hadn’t happened. There is a sorrow that leads to repentance. But this isn’t it. A true repentance and a true sorrow.

• This is a psychological sorrow.
• This is an emotional sorrow.
• This is an attitude that wishes it hadn’t happened.

Judas began to feel regret.

How much regret or sorrow did he feel? Judas brought again the 30 pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders. The only thing he knew to do was undo what he had done. He went to the chief priests.

He approached them right there in their transit, taking Jesus to the place where Pilate would rule on Him. He comes to them in the midst of the fever of his own guilt and he approaches them, wanting to undo what he did, he wants to give back the 30 pieces of silver. This is how he wants to relieve his psychological pain.

Like someone who goes to a counsellor because they are having so much guilt and wants the counsellor to help them track back through all their experiences that created guilt and try to unwind all that in retrospect, try to undo whatever caused it.

There is no sense of seeking God. There is no sense of seeking the Lord. It’s as if he sought not righteousness but relief.

• He sought not holiness but health.
• He sought not a Savior but a salve.
• He had feelings but there was no change in his heart about sin.
• There was no change in his mind about who Christ was.
• There was no desire for the truth.
• There was no belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the Saviour.

He just wanted to get rid of his pain.

He wanted to unload his guilt because he knew that he had betrayed an innocent man. The essential wrongness of that went off in him like an explosion and created pain in every part of his being. The blood money which he wanted so badly, the very same thing he longed for so greatly, when he finally got it, burned holes in his hands like hot lead.

Sin is like that. What you think you want so bad, when you get it gives you nothing but a guilt you can’t deal with. That’s just the way sin is. It looks good and then you take it, and it stings with a poison that you may the rest of your life, except for the grace of God, never be relieved from.

V 4, saying, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.” And they said, “What is that to us? You see to it!” Judas uses the word for sin, the strong New Testament word for sin.

• He doesn’t say this is God.
• He doesn’t say this is God’s Son.
• He doesn’t say this is the Saviour.

He just says, “I have sinned because I have betrayed innocent blood.” What a confession it is. The watching world needs to understand this. This is Judas testifying to the perfection of Jesus Christ. This is His archenemy, humanly speaking.

This is His traitor, His betrayer saying, “This is an innocent man.”

• All the world tries to accuse Jesus.
• The demons couldn’t do it.
• Satan couldn’t do it successfully.
• The Jewish leaders couldn’t do it successfully.
• Judas couldn’t do it.

Now Judas comes back and says He is an innocent man. I betrayed innocent blood! Judas is following basic Jewish jurisprudence. Judas came back as a false witness to confess that he was a false witness. I believe in my heart that Judas wanted them to take his life.

I believe he came back under such tremendous guilt that he wanted to have his life taken.

He knew Deuteronomy 16, that a false witness who witnesses against a person unto death pays with his own life. I think he wanted relief. He wanted death because when they wouldn’t take his life, he took his own life. I believe Judas would have wanted them to give him the punishment he was due, to inflict upon himself a payment for the guilt that he was feeling in his heart.

I doubt that any man who ever lived felt more guilt than Judas felt, because no man ever committed a more enormous crime than he committed. Furthermore, the Sanhedrin, by Jewish law, should have been sitting in session, and when he came back and said this is an innocent man. This is the introduction of a new thought should have made them retry Christ, particularly when it was the very man who was the chief witness against Him to start with.

This shows again how in-just the trial was. A man who is this distressed who is under this much anxiety and guilt would try every way possible in his mind to come up with something Jesus did which would justify in his own thinking his act of betraying Christ.

He would have done anything to come up with a word or a deed or an act or something that Jesus did or said somewhere

sometime that would show Him to be an evil man and therefore justify in Judas’ own mind this act of betrayal. But the fact that he comes back and says, “This is an innocent man,” is indicative of the fact that even a desperate man, wanting to salvage his own soul and his own life and deliver himself from the pain of guilt, can’t find one thing on which he can rationalize his own act! Not one thing.

The testimony of the Jewish leaders against Jesus is they can’t find an accusation. The testimony of Judas against Him, intimate for three years, he can’t find an accusation. We have those who are His avowed enemies agreeing on the fact that He is a perfect man. What a testimony!

Though energized and controlled by Satan and demons, no accusation stands.

What their response was when he came back? V 4, “What is that to us? You see to it!”

What do we care?

What kind of shepherds are they in Israel? Jesus rightly characterized them in Matthew 23.

Matthew 23:4, For they bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.

• They don’t care.
• They are indifferent to this man’s sorrow.
• They are indifferent to his guilt.
• They are indifferent to his pain, anxiety and remorse.
• They are stone-cold, hard-hearted.
• They won’t hear it.

When Matthew wrote this and it spread around, the Jews would read it as justification for impeaching the entire Sanhedrin. If your chief witness comes back and says he was a liar, you must hear that testimony. Their refusal to hear it and their statement.

They should have all been impeached. They are the criminals based on the testimony of Judas.

Deuteronomy 27:25, Cursed is the one who takes a bribe to slay an innocent person.’ “And all the people shall say, ‘Amen!’ Judas knew he was cursed. Whether he understood all the theology or not, but he understood the guilt of it.

The Sanhedrin should have taken his life. They should have been impeached for not taking his life, not rehearing the case, not exonerating Jesus Christ. The only guilty person in this whole thing is the enemy of Christ. But the world doesn’t give the sinner anything.

• They don’t give him sympathy.
• They can’t give him forgiveness.
• They won’t even take his life and give him relief.
• They won’t give him anything.

The world never does. The testimony of Jesus is so powerful here.

What is Judas going to do?

How is he doing to deal with this? V 5, Then he threw down the pieces of silver in the temple and departed, and went and hanged himself. He went to the temple, and he threw it down. The word in the Greek is rhiptō. It’s a word that means to throw down in angry defiance, might be a good way to put it.

A word of anger or defiance.

He went to the leaders and tried to give back the money. They wouldn’t take it. Some people say, well he went and threw it in the temple because he had a heart for charity. No, he didn’t turn instantly into a philanthropist.

He wasn’t preoccupied with doing a wonderful deed for the people in the city. He had another reason. The word here, temple is the key to understanding this whole thing. There are two words in the Greek language used in the gospels for temple.

One is hieron and Other is naos. The first one means the temple total, the whole area, the courtyards, the walls, the whole thing very broad. The other is the word naos. It refers to the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies, the sanctuary in the middle.

When he went back, he didn’t just throw the silver into the hieron. He didn’t just throw it into the whole place, into the courtyard where anybody could pick it up and put it in the

receptacles and use it for whatever they wanted. He didn’t just throw it in there for poor people to put in their pockets. He threw it in the naos, he went right inside to the courtyard, right inside to the court of the women where the offerings were given, he went beyond that to the door of the holy place and the Holy of Holies. He took that money and he threw it inside the holy place.

Every time that word is used in the gospels it has reference to the sanctuary itself, the inner place, the holy place. He threw it in there.

Why? Spite. There was only group of people who could go in there they are Priests. Judas was saying to them, “If you won’t take it willingly and do something with it, I will force you to take it and do something with it.”

He threw it into a place where only the priests could go and therefore, they had to deal with it. It was an act of spite. Then he left and hanged himself. This did not take place immediately it happened after 43 days.

There are only two classic suicides in the Bible. Both of those suicides, Ahithophel and Judas, were betrayers and killed themselves because of the guilt of betrayal. Both of them hanged themselves.

Why did he hang himself?

Couldn’t he have done something other than that?

Of course. Why did he do that?

Deuteronomy 21:22-23, “If a man has committed a sin deserving of death, and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, 23 his body shall not remain overnight on the tree, but you shall surely bury him that day, so that you do not defile the land which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance; for he who is hanged is accursed of God. Retribution concept that recognizes the enormity of sin that wants to curse itself to punish itself. Judas takes his life as an ultimate act of punishment and does it in a way that is ultimately cursed by God, inflicting upon himself what he feels he justly deserves because of the overpowering guilt that exists in his soul due to the sin that he commits. He went and hanged himself. He went to the chief priests, only a few feet away was Jesus.

• He went to the wrong ones.
• He could have gone to Jesus Christ.

But he didn’t.

• He didn’t believe in Jesus Christ.
• He didn’t believe He could forgive sin.
• He didn’t believe He was the Son of God.
• He went to his own place, the place where he belonged, where his heart was to hell itself.
• Death doesn’t relieve guilt.
• Death doesn’t relieve sin.
• Death doesn’t relieve misery.
• Death doesn’t relieve pain.

It just makes it permanent and intensifies it beyond imagination. Whatever Judas suffered before he killed Jesus, he suffers this day, far more severely than he did then.

Acts 1:18, (Now this man purchased a field with the wages of iniquity; and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his entrails gushed out. How can you harmonize those two things? Very easy. He hanged himself, the branch broke, the rope broke, the noose slipped. We don’t know what happened.

But the combination of both is very simple. He hanged himself as ineptly as he did everything else and fell, crushed on the rocks beneath. A sad tragic man. V 6, But the chief priests took the silver pieces and said, “It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, because they are the price of blood.”

The chief priests now have the money.

What are they going to do with it? They took it and they said it is not lawful to put them in the treasury. Disgusting hypocrisy! Now they are going to get really lawful. It is not lawful to put this in the treasury. “Because it is the price of blood.”

It is blood money. Now they have not only the testimony of Judas to the innocence of Christ, but the testimony of the whole Sanhedrin. They finally said it.

Do you know what blood money was?

Money illegitimately paid to someone to get someone else killed. Here you have the testimony for all time and for all the world right out of the mouths of the chief priests themselves that the money they gave to Judas was blood money.

They are so self-righteous, they didn’t mind taking it out of the treasury to be blood money, but they were too pious to put it back where it came from, because it was blood money. They in their own mouths confirm the bloody deed they did in bribing Judas.

It is the price of blood. They said it.

• It isn’t the testimony of God only that it was blood money
• It isn’t the testimony of the Bible writer that it was blood money only.
• It is the testimony of the men who bribed the traitor that it was blood money.

V 7, And they consulted together and bought with them the potter’s field, to bury strangers in. We can’t put it in the korbanas, the temple treasury. Blood money is unacceptable.

So, they had a meeting, took another vote from a resolution, and they bought with the 30 pieces the potter’s field. Now a potter’s field is a place where you pick up clay. Potter’s field would be a place that had been used by potters for a long time, all the clay had been scraped off. It was probably down to bare rock. There wasn’t anything left. It was useless in a sense.

It was just a field that was there. You could probably buy it cheaply. They decided to buy the potter’s field, no longer being used or perhaps still being used, but for sale to bury alien people in, bury people who came to Jerusalem on pilgrimages and whatever to be there, probably Gentiles.

They wanted a place to put Gentiles. They would use sort of vile polluted money to buy a polluted field to bury polluted Gentiles in. That was their idea. It was sort of a good will gesture toward Gentiles who came to Jerusalem and died.

They didn’t know where they came from and they wanted to dispose of them in a nice way. They thought they would do a charitable deed for the strangers that populated their city. They bought this field.

By their own lips they confess to their deed. The hypocrisy of men and the prophecy of God. They bought the potter’s field. V 8, Therefore that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day.

Who called that field of blood? The people did. 30 years after this when Matthew writes, it is called “the field of blood” to this day. Why did they call it a field of blood? It was not called as potter’s field or a burial place.

But it was the field of blood because it was bought with blood money. Jerusalem have nicknamed this field the field of blood. Their testimony is that that money which Judas received, gave back, which was used to buy the field was blood money. We attest to it.

• The testimony of the population themselves that Jesus was executed by bribery and unlawfully.

• The testimony of the Sanhedrin, they can’t find anything against Him.
• The testimony of Judas, he can’t find anything against Him.
• The testimony of Pilate, He is an innocent man.
• The testimony of the Sanhedrin, this is blood money.

The whole thing is illegal. They have admitted it. The testimony of the whole population of Jerusalem 30 years later, it is the field of blood. Jesus died because of bribery. The hypocrisy of men was nothing but fulfilling the prophecy of God.

V 9-10, Then was fulfilled what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, saying, “And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the value of Him who was priced, whom they of the children of Israel priced, 10 and gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord directed me.”

Men thought they were doing their work, and all the time they were fulfilling God’s plan. It was prophecy.

This act of buying that field to bury strangers in was a testimony of the whole community. A living memorial to the bribery to the blood money.

Acts 1:18-19, (Now this man purchased a field with the wages of iniquity; and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his entrails gushed out. 19 And it became known to all those dwelling in Jerusalem; so that field is called in their own language, Akel Dama, that is, Field of Blood.) Judas fell and his bowels gushed out it is about 43 days after this, and the people also called the field of blood.

Why? Because Judas was associated with the blood money. The place he died was a field of blood 43 days later. Thirty years later the field they bought was the field of blood. The testimony of the populace then was anything that even related to Judas was a field of blood.

Innocent blood was shed.

Was that the plot of man? No, it was the plan of God. Yes, the plot of man in a sense, but really the plan of God. Because that’s what the prophet said.

This prophecy comes from Zechariah.

Zechariah 11:12-13, Then I said to them, “If it is agreeable to you, give me my wages; and if not, refrain.” So they weighed out for my wages thirty pieces of silver. 13 And the Lord said to me, “Throw it to the potter”—that princely price they set on me. So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the Lord for the potter. In Zechariah it mentions the ³⁰ pieces of silver. It mentions the potter’s field.

But if all you had was Zechariah, you wouldn’t understand the fullness of the prophecy, so the Holy Spirit here alters the words a brief bit to make its meaning full. The Holy Spirit has a right to do. But it is a direct prophecy from Zechariah.

You can’t make it fit into Jeremiah. Some people try to see it alluded to in Jeremiah 18, others in Jeremiah 19, it isn’t there.

Is the Bible wrong?

Why does it say Jeremiah? Very simple. When the Jews divided the Old Testament, they divided it into

three sections

• The law,
• The prophets, and
• The writings.

Luke 24:44, Then He said to them, “These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me.” Jesus refers to the law, the prophets, and the psalms. All the wisdom literature falls under the Psalms. You have the law, the prophets, and the Psalms. It’s the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes all the wisdom literature, Song of Solomon, but its heading is the Psalms.

The category of the prophets in rabbinic tradition, in rabbinic manuscripts, and in the Talmud is always headed by the book of Jeremiah. So, to a Jew the three sections of the Old Testament would be the law, Jeremiah and the Psalms.

When the writer refers to Jeremiah, he is simply taking the name that was at the top of the prophetic roll which was Jeremiah, because his prophecy was listed first, then came the major prophets and then the minor prophets.

This is no different than what Jesus did when He referred to a whole category of wisdom literature as the Psalms, because that is the heading on that scroll as well. No contradiction. Prophecy was fulfilled. Here Jesus appears to be humiliated but the truth is He is exalted.

• He is exalted by the inability of the counsel to find any accusation against Him.
• He is exalted by the testimony of the chief witness and bribed traitor as to His innocence.
• He is exalted by the testimony of the Sanhedrin themselves that they have blood money in their hands.
• He is exalted by the testimony of the populace of Jerusalem who call everything related to this incident blood, a field of blood.
• He is exalted by the very fact that all of this fulfils the prophecy of the Old Testament.

Out of the ugliness of the scene comes the beauty of Jesus Christ stands majestic and that is the writer’s intention.