18
The Traitor’s Suicide
(27:1–10)
Now when morning had come, all the chief priests and
the elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put Him to
death; and they bound Him, and led Him away, and delivered Him up to
Pilate the governor.
Then when Judas, who had betrayed Him, saw that He
had been condemned, he felt remorse and returned the thirty pieces of
silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, “I have sinned by
betraying innocent blood.” But they said, “What is that to us?
See to that yourself!” And he threw the pieces of silver into the
sanctuary and departed; and he went away and hanged himself. And the
chief priests took the pieces of silver and said, “It is not lawful
to put them into the temple treasury, since it is the price of
blood.” And they counseled together and with the money bought the
Potter’s Field as a burial place for strangers. For this reason
that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day. Then that
which was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled, saying,
“And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of the one
whose price had been set by the sons of Israel; and they gave them
for the Potter’s Field, as the Lord directed me.” (27:1–10)
In recent years in the United States, twice as many
people have killed themselves as have killed others. Because experts
believe that many seemingly natural deaths are actually
self-inflicted, the incidence is probably much higher than what is
reported. Suicide ranks among the top ten killers in the United
States, and many other countries have rates that are even higher.
Researchers who analyze human behavior list five primary
reasons for committing suicide. I believe most people kill themselves
for retaliation. Because they are angry over an offense or
mistreatment, they take their own lives as a means of hurting those
who have hurt them. Whether their abuse was real or imagined, they
invariably succeed in inflicting deep pain on those they seek to
hurt. This is almost always the case when young people kill
themselves. And usually it is their parents they want to hurt
irremediably.
Some people take their own lives for the sake of reunion
with loved ones who have already died. Older spouses who were
particularly dependent on their mates sometimes decide to join them
in death rather than endure the loneliness and frustration of life
without them.
Some people take their lives out of a desire for
rebirth. With the increased influence of Eastern religions, many
Westerners have been persuaded of the reality of reincarnation, and
by committing suicide they hope to be reborn into a better form or
circumstance.
A particularly distorted reason for suicide is referred
to as retroflex, the killing of oneself in place of someone else who
is unreachable. Some years ago a man killed himself because a brutal
Nazi war criminal could not be found and brought to justice.
For some people, suicide is an extreme form of
self-retribution. Considering their guilt to be unforgivable and
unremediable, some people, in effect, sentence themselves to capital
punishment and carry out the sentence by their own hand.
Because every human being is made in the image of God
and belongs to Him, no one has the right to murder anyone, even
himself. Suicide is self-murder and is rebellion against God’s
sovereign right over life and death. It is an act of sin and
unbelief, a clear violation of the sixth commandment, “You shall
not murder” (Ex. 20:13).
According to the common definition of suicide, Scripture
reports only two instances. Although Saul and his armor bearer took
their own lives, they did so only because they faced a much more
brutal and humiliating death at the hands of the enemy. But in the
usual sense, only the deaths of Ahithophel (see 2 Sam. 17) and Judas
were suicide.
Because Judas’s sin was so monstrous, it is not
difficult to understand how unrelieved guilt drove him to take his
own life. He committed the most heinous crime any man has ever
committed or could commit, betraying the only truly innocent and
perfect man who has ever lived. Because he could not live with his
guilt, Judas had only two choices. He could have gone to Jesus for
forgiveness and salvation, which the Lord had so often offered. But
because he would not do that, his only recourse was self-destruction.
For the account of Judas’s suicide, Matthew briefly
interrupts his portrayal of Jesus’ trial. His purpose in presenting
the story of Judas’s final hours of life was not simply to show the
dreadful fate of Christ’s betrayer but also to show, by several
contrasts, the beauty, purity, and majesty of the one betrayed. Jesus
is exalted even against the backdrop of sordid sin and death.
The Contrast Between the Wicked Leaders and the Sinless
Christ
Now when morning had come, all the chief priests and
the elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put Him to
death; and they bound Him, and led Him away, and delivered Him up to
Pilate the governor. (27:1–2)
Contrary to rabbinical law, the first two phases of
Jesus’ religious trial were carried out during the night and away
from the Temple. He had first been brought before the former high
priest Annas, probably in the hope that this wicked conniver could
concoct a charge against Jesus that would justify the death penalty.
When that failed, Christ was brought before the acting high priest,
Caiaphas, and the hastily-assembled Sanhedrin. Even with willing
false witnesses that group was also unable to indict Jesus. Only when
He confessed to being the Christ and God’s Son did they discover a
way to destroy Him. Although He spoke the truth, they convicted Him
of blasphemy and being worthy of death (Matt. 26:63–66). He was
sentenced to death for the truth, for being who He indeed is.
Now when morning had come, Matthew recounts, all
the chief priests and the elders of the people took counsel against
Jesus to put Him to death. Although they had already reached a
verdict about His guilt and punishment, they still had two hurdles.
First, they had to devise a way to make their decision appear legal
under rabbinical law. Mark mentions that in addition to all the
chief priests and the elders, “scribes, and the whole Council”
were present (15:1). Second, because the people knew that all trials
involving the death penalty had to be conducted in the daytime and in
the Temple court, they had to wait until morning of that
Passover Friday to reconvene the Sanhedrin in its legitimate council
chamber (Luke 22:66). The counsel they took among themselves
amounted to reasserting the charges against Jesus and
reaffirming the verdict to put Him to death (see Luke
22:67–71).
After that point, however, the Jewish leaders dropped
all pretense of legality. As explained in chapter 16 of this volume,
rabbinical law required that a sentence of death could not be carried
out until the third day after it was rendered and that during the
intervening day the members of the court were to fast. The delay of
execution provided additional time for evidence or testimony to be
discovered in the defendant’s behalf. Because Friday was a holy day
for Judean Jews, which included virtually all the religious leaders,
and the next day was the Sabbath, the earliest legitimate execution
of Jesus could not have been until Sunday—assuming the trial itself
had been legitimate. On this occasion, however, the Sanhedrin did not
bother to give even the semblance of compliance with that
requirement. Now that Jesus was finally in their custody, they
determined to destroy Him as quickly as possible.
But because they were not allowed to administer the
death penalty themselves (John 18:31), the Jewish leaders now had to
convince the Roman governor to give immediately the required
permission for Jesus’ execution. Therefore they bound Him, and
led Him away, and delivered Him up to Pilate the governor. With
that hearing, the first phase of Jesus’ secular, Roman trial would
begin.
Pontius Pilate had been the Roman governor
of Judea since a.d. 26, when Tiberius Caesar was emperor, and
continued to govern until the year 36. Jesus was taken to the
Praetorium, the official provincial residence of the governor, and to
keep from being ceremonially defiled and thereby prevented from
celebrating the Passover later that day, the Jewish leaders waited
outside (John 18:28).
The Contrast Between Guilty Judas and Innocent Jesus
Then when Judas, who had betrayed Him, saw that He
had been condemned, he felt remorse and returned the thirty pieces of
silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, “I have sinned by
betraying innocent blood.” But they said, “What is that to us?
See to that yourself!” And he threw the pieces of silver into the
sanctuary and departed; and he went away and hanged himself.
(27:3–5)
We are not told where Judas was during the Jewish mock
trials. He doubtless had followed the multitude from the Mount of
Olives to Annas’s house and was waiting nearby, perhaps in the
courtyard where Peter was. It is possible that he was called as one
of the witnesses against Jesus, but that seems unlikely. Judas still
had the onus of being a disciple of Jesus, and, in any case, the very
fact he was a traitor would have made his testimony suspect. Because
Judas had fulfilled his usefulness to them, the chief priests and
elders wanted nothing more to do with him. He was now a rejected
outcast-to them, to the disciples, and to Jewish society in general.
Then when could be translated “at that time,”
which seems to fit the context. Even before dawn it had became
obvious to Judas and the others in the courtyard that the foregone
verdict of the Jewish leaders had been confirmed. Now Judas, who
had betrayed Him, saw with his own eyes that He had been
condemned. Although horaō (saw) was sometimes used
in the figurative sense of being aware of or perceiving, its use here
suggests literal, physical sight. If Peter was able to see Jesus
during at least part of the trial (Luke 22:61), then others in the
courtyard could have seen Him as well. Judas had seen Jesus maligned,
spat upon, beaten, and mocked. Now he watched in bewilderment as his
condemned Teacher was taken to Pilate.
As Judas watched Jesus being carried away to Pilate, the
full enormity of his treachery finally began to dawn on him as he
realized the Jewish leaders did indeed intend to put Jesus to death.
The one last obstacle was the permission of Pilate, which Judas had
no reason to believe would be denied. Once Pilate consented, Jesus’
death would be inevitable.
The sight was devastating to Judas, more than even his
money-hungry mind, his sordid soul, and his seared conscience could
deal with. He felt remorse as he began to experience the
intense, excruciating pain that is unique to profound guilt.
No man could be more evil than Judas Iscariot. Only
eleven other men in all of history have had the intimate, personal
relationship he had with the incarnate Son of God. No man has ever
been more exposed to God’s perfect truth, both in precept and
example. No man has been more exposed firsthand to God’s love,
compassion, power, kindness, forgiveness, and grace. No man has had
more evidence of Jesus’ divinity or more firsthand knowledge of the
way of salvation. Yet in all of those three indescribably blessed
years with Jesus, Judas did not take so much as the first step of
faith.
In a way that defies comprehension, Judas persistently
resisted and rejected God’s truth, God’s grace, and even God’s
own Son. Also in a way that defies understanding, he managed to
completely conceal his wicked rebellion from everyone but Jesus. His
hypocrisy was so complete and deceptive that even when Jesus
predicted that one of the disciples would betray Him, Judas was not
suspected.
Judas was so totally trapped in the darkness and
corruption of sin that he became a willing instrument of Satan.
Because this false disciple had totally renounced Christ, “Satan
entered into Judas who was called Iscariot” (Luke 22:3), and it was
then a simple matter to persuade him to betray Jesus (John 13:2).
Judas’s heart was so utterly hardened to the things of God that
long before he consciously considered betraying Him, Jesus called him
a devil (John 6:70).
Even so, Judas could not escape the divinely designed
signal of guilt that reminds men of their sin and warns them of its
consequences. Just as pain is an intrinsic and automatic warning of
physical danger, guilt is an intrinsic and automatic warning of
spiritual danger. It was not that Judas suddenly became afraid of
God, else he would have turned in desperation to the One he knew
could forgive him. Nor was he afraid of men. Although he was now
discarded and despised by the Jewish leaders, they had no reason to
harm him. It was rather that Judas suddenly realized the horrible
wrongness of what he had done. An innate awareness of right and wrong
is divinely built into every human being and cannot be totally
erased, no matter how deep a person may fall into depravity or how
consciously and rebelliously he may turn against God. This is
intensified by the convicting pressure of the Spirit of God.
Judas’s remorse was not repentance of sin, as
the King James Version suggests. Matthew did not use metanoeō,
which means a genuine change of mind and will, but metamelomai,
which merely connotes regret or sorrow. He did not experience
spiritual penitence but only emotional remorse. Although he
would not repent of his sin, he could not escape the reality of his
guilt. Genuine sorrow for sin (metamelomai) can be prompted by
God in order to produce repentance (metanoeō), as Paul
declares in 2 Corinthians 7:10. But Judas’s remorse was not
prompted by God to lead to repentance but only to guilt and despair.
Because he was a kind of witness against Jesus, perhaps
Judas thought that by admitting the wickedness of what he had done he
would be punished as a false witness, as Deuteronomy 19:16–19
prescribed. Under that provision, he would have been crucified
himself, suffering the penalty imposed on the one he caused to be
falsely convicted. Instead of looking to Jesus’ for forgiveness and
trusting in His atoning death, Judas’s perverted mind may have led
him to believe that by dying he somehow could atone for his own sin.
Proof that Judas’s sorrow was ungodly and selfish is
seen in the fact that he made no effort to defend or rescue Jesus. He
had no desire to vindicate or save Jesus but only to salve his own
conscience, which he attempted to do by returning the thirty
pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders.
While some of the Jewish religious leaders were
escorting Jesus to Pilate, others remained in the Temple. It was
there that Judas confronted them (see v. 5) and confessed that he had
sinned by betraying innocent blood. Had he been concerned
about forgiveness for his sin and had he really believed on the Lord,
he would have approached Jesus, not the chief priests and elders. He
hoped somehow to assuage his guilt simply by returning the blood
money. Like Pilate, who recognized Jesus’ innocence but
nevertheless permitted His death, Judas knew he had betrayed innocent
blood, but he did not come to Christ’s defense or seek His
forgiveness.
Had Judas been able to remember one fault in Jesus, one
deficiency or sin, he may have been able to rationalize his
treachery. But even Jesus’ arch enemy in the human realm could not
escape confessing His innocence. Like the Jewish religious leaders,
the Roman political leaders, the false witnesses, and even the
demons, Judas could find no fault in Jesus. In His sovereign power,
God caused even His enemies to testify to the Son’s sinless purity.
Yet despite his confession, Judas had not changed his
mind about who Jesus was or about his own need for salvation. He had
simply become aware of the wickedness of what he had done and wanted
relief from the overwhelming guilt that now tormented every part of
his being. The money he had wanted so badly now burned in his hands
like a live coal.
Sin never brings the satisfaction it promises. Instead
of happiness it brings sorrow, and instead of pleasure it produces
pain. It poisons with a pang that cannot be relieved apart from God’s
forgiving grace.
In reply to Judas’s agonized appeal, the chief priests
and elders callously replied, “What is that to us? See to that
yourself!” True to the characterization Jesus had given of them
a few days earlier, the religious leaders of Israel were adept at
laying heavy religious burdens on men’s shoulders, while not
lifting a finger themselves to help relieve those burdens (Matt.
23:4). They had no more concern for Judas than for Jesus and were as
cold-heartedly indifferent to his remorse as they were to Jesus’
innocence, which, in effect, they had already acknowledged.
Judas likely realized he was cursed, because the Mosaic
law made clear that “cursed is he who accepts a bribe to strike
down an innocent person” (Deut. 27:25). But because the Sanhedrin
had paid the betrayal bribe, they were hardly in a position to indict
and punish Judas for taking it. If they cared nothing for justice
regarding Jesus, they certainly cared nothing for it regarding Judas,
especially if it would bring their own indictment as well.
In utter desperation and frustration Judas defiantly
threw the pieces of silver into the sanctuary and departed.
Some interpreters assert that the money was cast into the Temple
treasury, suggesting that Judas’s final public act was a gesture of
charity. But naos (sanctuary) refers specifically to
the inner holy place of the Temple, where only priests were allowed
to enter. Judas intentionally threw the money into a place where only
the priests could retrieve it. He did not throw it there out of
charity but out of spite, wanting them to feel guilty and forcing the
chief priests to handle the blood money again themselves.
Following that, he went away and hanged himself.
Considering himself already cursed because of his treachery and
having unrelieved pain from having committed the greatest crime in
human history, he may have reasoned that hanging was the only escape
and a fitting death, knowing that “he who is hanged is accursed of
God” (Deut. 21:23). We cannot know Judas’s mind, but
self-retribution seems a credible explanation for what he did. If so,
he took his own life as an act of ultimate self-punishment, in a way
that was certain to be cursed by God, thereby inflicting upon himself
what his overpowering sense of guilt caused him to believe he justly
deserved.
But death does not relieve guilt; it makes it permanent
and intensified beyond comprehension. As Jesus repeatedly declared,
hell is a place of eternal torment, of “weeping and gnashing of
teeth” (Matt. 8:12; 13:42, 50; 22:13; 24:51; 25:30). It is a place
of “unquenchable fire, where their worm does not die, and the fire
is not quenched” (Mark 9:43–44). Judas today cries out in the
eternal pain of his undiminished guilt.
According to Acts 1:18, when Judas committed suicide he
fell headlong and “burst open in the middle and all his bowels
gushed out.” Although this account and the one in Matthew report
different aspects of his death, they are compatible. He must have
hanged himself from a weak limb of a tree on a hillside, and when the
limb broke under his weight he fell down the slope and was crushed on
the rocks below.
The Contrast Between the Hypocrisy of Men and the
Prophecy of God
And the chief priests took the pieces of silver and
said, “It is not lawful to put them into the temple treasury, since
it is the price of blood.” And they counseled together and with the
money bought the Potter’s Field as a burial place for strangers.
For this reason that field has been called the Field of Blood to this
day. Then that which was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet was
fulfilled, saying, “And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the
price of the one whose price had been set by the sons of Israel; and
they gave them for the Potter’s Field, as the Lord directed them.”
(27:6–10)
Because the chief priests were forced to take
back the pieces of silver, they had to devise a way to dispose
of it. After their unjust and despicable treatment of Jesus, one
wonders why they suddenly became concerned about legal propriety.
They knew it was not lawful to put the money into the
temple treasury, since it was the price of blood, and for
some hypocritical reason they decided to honor that particular
restriction. But by admitting it was blood money they
condemned themselves out of their own mouths. By definition, the
price of blood referred to money illegitimately paid and received
to falsely convict a man of a crime that led to his execution.
Strangely and perversely, the chief priests and elders had no
compunction about taking the money out of the Temple treasury to pay
Judas for the betrayal, but now they had qualms about putting it
back. In doing so, they testified before the world to their guilt and
hypocrisy. It is interesting to note how callous and unfeeling they
were about their crime, in contrast to the overwhelming agony of
Judas that drove him to kill himself in a vain attempt to relieve his
guilt.
They counseled together and decided to use the
money to buy the Potter’s Field as a burial place for
strangers. As a good will gesture to the public and also to salve
their own consciences, they hit upon the idea of buying a field where
potters had collected clay to use in their trade. Perhaps the clay
was depleted and the field was available for a cheap price. The
religious leaders may have reasoned that they would use the defiled
money to buy a defiled and useless field in which to bury defiled
strangers, a term often used by Jews as a euphemism for
Gentiles. Or the field may have been used to bury any traveler who
died while visiting Jerusalem, especially those who were indigent.
For that reason, Matthew explains, that field
has been called the Field of Blood to this day, referring to the
time, some thirty years later, when his gospel was written. The
Potter’s Field had come to be called the Field of Blood,
because it was common knowledge that it had been purchased with blood
money. And by that name, the entire city testified to Jesus’
innocence, acknowledging that He had been falsely accused, falsely
condemned, and falsely executed.
In the naming of that field, that which was spoken
through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled, saying, “And they took
the thirty pieces of silver, the price of the one whose price had
been set by the sons of Israel; and they gave them for the Potter’s
Field, as the Lord directed me.”
The fact that this quotation comes from Zechariah
14:11–12 and not from the book of Jeremiah has caused some
interpreters to accuse Matthew of error. Others have tried to relate
the quotation to sections of Jeremiah 18 or 19, although it clearly
does not fit. The explanation is found in the Jewish division of the
Old Testament into three sections-the Law, the Writings, and the
Prophets. In the rabbinical order of the prophetic books, Jeremiah
was always listed first. For that reason the entire prophetic
category was sometimes referred to as Jeremiah, just as the
entire section of the Writings was sometimes referred to as the
Psalms, its opening book. Spoken through Jeremiah the prophet
was therefore the equivalent of saying, “recorded in the prophetic
books.”
Like every other incident in the life of our Lord, that
one did not catch God by surprise but was a precise fulfillment of
specific prophecy in His omniscient plan. Even in Judas’s death,
God’s Word was honored and the Lord Jesus Christ was glorified.
Doctrinal and Ethical
1. On the Character of Judas, see our previous
remarks. For more detailed treatises about his call to the
apostolate, comp. Heubner, Comment, p. 418. On the defence set
up for Judas by a section of the Gnostics and of the Menonites, and
by some modern writers, see Heubner, p. 420.
2. The Repentance of Judas.—Terrible and mysterious as
is the guilt, so awful and sad is the repentance of the traitor, as
it ultimately terminates in the blackness of despair. The ancients
were wont to place it side by side with the penitence of Cain, as the
counterpart of true repentance. Thus much is evident, that from first
to last his penitence was unhealthy and godless. For its source and
origin was not his guilt, but the consequences resulting from it
(“when Judas saw that,” etc.). Secondly, in its course and
progress it did not appear as repentance toward God, in the economy
of salvation. We see him seeking first to offer human satisfaction
before the priests; next, retiring as a penitent into solitude; and
lastly, casting himself, in his suicide, headlong into the abyss of
despair. We note the opposite of all this in Peter. Here we have
first bitter weeping, repentance toward God, and return to Christ;
and then human satisfaction, offered in the strength of the pardoned
soul and in newness of life. Lastly, there is the sad termination in
the case of Judas,—his repentance being the sorrow of the world,
which worketh death (2 Cor. 7:10). At the outset, he wants the
genuineness and sincerity in dealing with an offended God which
constitutes the grand characteristic of true repentance; during the
course of it, that faith which flies for refuge to the sovereign
mercy of God, who is able and willing to pardon; and hence, in the
end, the victory of hope and love over despair. Heubner remarks:
“When the conscience of a sinner awakens and fills him with terror
he is hopelessly lost if he lose faith—faith in the grace of God,
who is able and willing to pardon, and faith in an atoning and
all-sufficient Saviour. Hence it is absolutely necessary to keep firm
hold of faith.” However, ingenuousness and truth are the condition
of ability to believe. He that doeth the truth cometh to the light.
The same writer remarks; “Satan has two arts by which he seduces
men. Before we sin he cries out: Spera! and after we have
sinned: Despera!” (See the quotation from Luther,
Works, vol. xix. 1498.)
3. Suicide: Saul, Ahithophel, Judas.—“Suicide, if
not freely and voluntarily committed, but arising from physical
disturbance, may expect pardon from God.” In his “Table talk,”
Luther expressly says (Walch’s edition, ch. 48 § 13, p. 1039),
“that all cases of suicide are not condemned.” (Which may be
added to Stäudlin’s History of the opinions on Suicide, p.
116.) Heubner: “When suicide is committed freely, and with full
consciousness and reflection, it is always the result of sinful
estrangement and alienation from the Creator, and of despair in
everlasting love. True, it is very generally also the consequence of
gross sins which torment the soul, and of violent passions. These
alone, however, do not lead men to their eternal downfall; it is
unbelief alone. Hence it is that suicides are now so much more
common.”—What makes suicide at once detestable and horrifying is,
in the first place, the false and wicked combination of the most
extreme contradictions,—self-love and self-abandonment, deliverance
and destruction, healing and murder, rebellion against God and forth
stepping to His judgment-bar; in the second place, the fact that the
self-murderer perverts to his own destruction that moment which God
had appointed to be the crisis of his perfected salvation (see
Acts 16:27); in the third place, the circumstance that the
self-murderer, regardless of consequences, anticipates and
neutralizes, in a cowardly and wicked manner, the act of free
surrender of the soul to God in death, which is its highest spiritual
form (see the author’s Positive Dogmatik, p. 1243).
Suicide is, so to speak, the theatrical exhibition and full
development of sin’s self-destructive nature, and is the natural
type of eternal self-condemnation. Truth accordingly must never in
its testimony cease to war against suicide, regarded in itself; she
cannot compromise with it, but must ever condemn it as the evidence
of despairing unbelief. But as suicide is often the result of bodily
and mental weakness, the twin child of madness, we should deal with
actual cases in a forbearing, mild, and cautious spirit. We should
act similarly in those cases where remorse in after-life leads to
suicide, though that act appears to be merely the natural consequence
of the preceding heinous crime committed by the miserable persons.
The spiritual suicide of Judas was consummated in the moment of his
treachery against his Lord and Master. Heubner’s statement: “We
may fall ever so low, if we only hold fast the faith,” is as liable
to misconception as many similar remarks of Luther. Faith is ethical
in its very nature, and cannot be separated from moral laws. Unon
other points connected with suicide, consult the Systems of Ethics.
We should not return to the confessional, because the reserve of
ungodly men and their brooding lead them to self-destruction; but we
should, throughout the Evangelical Church, recommend the practice of
a free confession of heart.
4. Appropriation of the Blood-Money.—“Hypocritical
conscientiousness. Their scruples arose from Deut. 23:18:—‘Thou
shalt not bring the hire of a whore, or the price of a dog, into the
house of the Lord thy God for any vow; for even both these are an
abomination unto the Lord thy God.’ The instruments of the wicked
are a source of disgust and dread to them, especially those to whom
the stain of blood attaches as a memorial of their guilt. They are
agents to awaken conscience, and threaten punishment. These wretches
suffered blood to stain their hands and lie upon their consciences,
but they would not allow the temple treasury to be defiled. The
money-chest they valued above their conscience. They would not
transgress by receiving defiled money, for they feared to render
their treasury valueless: this was their reverence for God (Matt.
23:24). There is a proper solicitude, however, which we should all
have, to keep our property undefiled.”—“They appropriated the
money to a charitable purpose; but it is impossible to remove the
guilt and disgrace of former days by acts of mercy.” Heubner.
Similar institutions were common in the Middle Ages. The cloister of
Königsfelden in Switzerland was the fruit of Queen Agnes’ bloody
vengeance.
5. The Field of Blood.—Even in the acts of charity
performed by the Sanhedrin, the characteristic traits of its members
come to view; the most complete hypocrisy, making the money-chest of
God’s house more sacred than God Himself and God’s acre. They
purchase for a paltry sum, and that the price of blood, a field of
blood, to inter pious pilgrims from heathen nations, who were not
reckoned to be fully Jewish proselytes. So the charity of the Middle
Ages sought out beggars upon whom to expend its kind offices, and
these it furnished with beggars’ broth. Unconsciously, these
hypocrites were compelled to perpetuate the memory of their sinful
acts; and in this act, besides, was given unconsciously a plastic
type of the Sanhedrin. Without willing it, they had to fulfil
Jeremiah’s prophecy. The purchase of the potter’s field to be a
resting-place for foreign pilgrims becomes prophetical of this, that
Jerusalem, Palestine, and Israel’s entire inheritance, was destined
to be a resting place for the believing Gentile world.
6. Here for the first time Christian grave-yards took
the place of isolated sepulchres, as was the custom among the Jews.
And who was probably the first interred in that field? This history
preaches mildness and tenderness.
Homiletical and Practical
The counsel and the treachery on the morning of the
feast. 1. The counsel and treachery: (a) An act of treachery
from a resolution of council; (b) a counsel which was
perfected by an act of treachery 2. On the morning of the feast: (a)
The morning thought; (b) the festival thought, of the rulers
of Israel.—The abominable display of the high-priest and the chief
council on the festal morning.—Christ’s murder disguised under an
imposing act of worship rendered to God.—The great display of
fanaticism, in its historic import to the world.—Blessed are they
who can resist the currents of the time.—The mad pomp with which
the Jews abandon their long-looked for King to the Gentiles.—Judaism
in the act of involving the Gentile world in the guilt of Christ’s
murder: the opposite of the promise: “In thy seed shall all the
nations of the earth be blessed,” Isa. 53—The effects of
magnificent display: 1. Its power; 2. its weakness.—Jesus abandoned
by His own nation to the Gentiles.—The second betrayal the sentence
of death pronounced upon the first betrayal (Now
when Judas saw).—The repentance of Judas the completion
of his guilt, as seen: 1. In its beginning; 2. its means; 3. its
end.—The repentance of Judas compared with Peter’s, 2 Cor.
7:10.—To render due satisfaction, we must begin at God’s
throne.—(Against Thee only have I sinned.) Ezek. 33:15, 16.—That
innocent blood, which he had betrayed, would have saved him, had he
known its full value.—Judas’s testimony to the innocence of Jesus
a significant fruit of his discipleship: 1. The spoiled fruit of a
reprobate or deserter; 2. the important testimony of a deserter.—The
unwilling testimony of the unbelieving and despairing to the glory
Jesus.—Behold how heartlessly the wicked abandon the instruments of
their guilt! “See thou to that.”—The confession of a
bleeding conscience is unheard by the hierarchical superintendents of
the confessional.—How soon is the friendship of the wicked at an
end!—They hurl one another mutually into destruction.—The
fruitless attempts of Judas to silence his conscience.—The end of
Judas; or, suicide the sign of finished unbelief.—The conscientious
scruples of the unscrupulous: “It is not lawful.”—The
charitable institutions of a hardness of heart which cloaks itself
under the garb of piety: 1. Their occasion,—the committal of a
crime; 2. their spring,—superstition and selfishness; 3. their
form,—monuments of a proud, unloving spirit.—The price at which
the world valued Christ sufficed to purchase an old, exhausted
clay-pit (“loam-pit or sandhole”).—The fulfillment of the
prophet’s word; or, the burying-ground of pious pilgrims—i.e.,
of believers—bought with the purchase money of Jesus.—The field
of blood of despairing Judaism converted into a burial-field (a
field of peace) for the believing Gentile world.—They who
delivered Christ over to the Gentiles have had to yield their land
likewise to the Gentiles.
Starke:—We should be up early, not to injure
our neighbor, but to praise God, Ps. 108:2, 3, and to attend honestly
to our calling, Ps. 104:23.—Zeisius: Christ has been bound
that He might free us from the bonds of sin, death, the devil, and
hell.—He also thereby sanctified and blessed the bonds of our
afflictions, especially those endured for the gospel.—Canstein:
Satan blinds the eyes to precipitate man into sin; and then he opens
them again, that despair may seize the sinner.—Do not be such a
fool as to commit a sin to gain the world’s favor; for it will draw
its head out of the noose, and leave thee to be hanged.—Quesnel:
There is a kind of hirelings and false shepherds, to whom it is of no
consequence whether their sheep stray and are lost or not.—Zeisius:
Do but see how far greed will lead a man.—Canstein: The
anguish of an evil conscience deprives a man of his judgment, so that
he is no more his own master; for when he thinks by self-murder to
free himself from: torment, he only plunges himself into eternal
torment.—Thou canst find many a companion in sin; but when thy poor
conscience will have comfort, thou art forsaken by them all.—Hast
thou sinned deeply, despair not; arise, and repent truly.—Nova
Bill. Tub.: Christ has given the grave money for our burial, and
has purchased for us, poor pilgrims who have nothing of our own, a
resting place.—Canstein: The wicked themselves must assist
in establishing divine truth.
Gossner:—“See thou to that:” such is their
absolution.
Gerlach:—It was a remarkable circumstance in
the passion history of Christ, that He must be delivered up to the
Gentiles. Not the Jews only were to reject and crucify the Son of
God, but the Gentiles also; and His blood crieth for mercy on behalf
of Jews as well as Gentiles.
Heubner:—The witness of Judas. He was the spy
whom Satan had been permitted to place among the confidential
friends; he was Satan’s appointed fault-finder, who should pay
attention to discover any fault that might be committed. But he had
to confess he had betrayed innocent blood.—That Judas might have
gained pardon, if he had believed, is acknowledged by, e. g.,
Chrysostom, in Sermon 1 on Repentance, and by Leo the Great, in the
11th Sermon on the Passion.—Even the most glorious opportunities of
virtue and religion, even the companionship and conversation of the
most holy and most lovable of men, are perverted to its own ruin by a
corrupted spirit.—An evil germ, small at first, but nourished and
tended, produces fruits ever more and more poisonous.—They care for
the bodies of dead foreigners, but let the souls of the living
perish.—The perpetuation of sinful acts through memorials, names,
etc., against the will and expectation of evil-doers.—How are the
children of God, yea, Christ Himself, valued in this world! To how
many are philosophers, artists, heroes, or millionnaires far more
precious!
Braune:—Common minds become small criminals,
great characters great criminals, as men judge: the former are base,
the latter more wicked. (Still the deed of Judas was the very depth
of baseness.)—He seeks to clear himself only before his own
conscience and his accomplices, not before God, and that he would do
without Jesus. He wanted faith, and hence he prayed not and sought
not.—Themselves they have stained, God’s treasury they would not
defile.—Schulz: The end of Judas: 1. His despair; 2. his
ruin.
[Burkitt:—Behold! a disciple, an apostle, first a
traitor, then a self-murderer. Behold! all ye covetous worldlings, to
what the love of that accursed idol has brought this wretched
apostle. Behold! Judas, once shining in the robes of a glorious
profession, now shining in the flames of God’s eternal wrath and
vengeance. Lord! how earnest ought we to be for thy preserving grace,
when neither the presence, the miracles, the sermons, the sacraments
of Christ, could preserve and secure a professor, a disciple and
apostle from ruinous apostasy. Let him that standeth take heed
lest he fall.—Doddridge:—The irresistible force of conscience
in the worst of men.—The testimony of the traitor to the innocence
of Jesus.—The wrath of man shall praise the Lord.—D. Brown:—The
true character of repentance is determined neither by its sincerity
nor by its bitterness, but by the views under which it is wrought.
Judas, under the sense of his guilt, had nothing to fall back upon;
Peter turned toward Jesus, who was able and willing to forgive. In
the one case we have natural principles working themselves out to
deadly effect; in the other, we see grace working repentance unto
salvation.—Wordsworth:—Judas, a type of the Jews, in his sin and
end (?).—P. S.]1
Judas Hangs Himself / 27:3–10 / 229
The
stories of Peter and Judas provide a dramatic contrast. We see in
Peter the weakness of humanity and in Judas the guilt and spiritual
consequences of rejecting Christ. Both had fulfilled Jesus’
predictions (26:24 for Judas; 26:34 for Peter), yet they responded
quite differently. Peter wept, repented, and was restored; Judas had
remorse, but killed himself. Forgiveness was available from the
Master, but Judas did not pursue it.
27:3–5 Judas, filled
with remorse at having betrayed Jesus, went back to the
leading priests (26:14–16). Jesus had been condemned to die,
and Judas realized his sin, but it was too late. The religious
leaders had Jesus where they wanted him, and they replied, “What
do we care?” What a response from the religious leadership! The
priests’ job was to teach people about God and act as intercessors
for them, helping them turn from sin and find forgiveness. Judas
returned to the priests, exclaiming that he had sinned. Rather than
helping him find forgiveness, however, the priests didn’t care. At
that, Judas threw the money onto the floor of the Temple. Judas
then hanged himself. Acts 1:18 says that he fell and burst open.
Evidently, the limb from which he was hanging broke, and the
resulting fall split open his body.2
124
THE REMORSE OF JUDAS
Matthew 27:1–10
As the long night of Jesus’
betrayal, arrest, trial, and condemnation came to an end, the Jewish
religious leaders prepared to take Him to the Roman governor to
secure a formal death penalty. Matthew relates this small detail in
the passage before us, but then, before telling us what happened at
Pontius Pilate’s palace, he completes the sad tale of Judas
Iscariot.
Matthew writes: When morning came, all the chief
priests and elders of the people plotted against Jesus to put Him to
death. And when they had bound Him, they led Him away and delivered
Him to Pontius Pilate the governor (vv. 1–2). As we have seen,
the chief priests and elders had satisfied themselves that Jesus was
deserving of death, condemning Him as a blasphemer for claiming to be
the Son of God. But they could not execute Him; the Romans did not
grant them that right, and the Romans would not execute Him for
committing blasphemy in the eyes of the Jews. Therefore, the priests
and elders plotted how they might convince the Roman governor to sign
Jesus’ death warrant.
In order to move Jesus from the home of the high priest,
Caiaphas, to the governor’s palace, the priests and elders found it
necessary to bind Him. Matthew does not tell us how they bound him,
but chains normally were used. After spitting on Him, mocking Him,
and slapping Him, the Jewish authorities added this indignity—they
led Jesus through the streets in chains. At the moment of His arrest
in Gethsemane, Jesus had offered no resistance and made no attempt to
flee. He even chided Peter for striking the high priest’s servant
with a sword (26:52). There was no reason for Jesus’ captors to
fear that He would try to escape. Yet they could not resist one more
opportunity to humiliate Him and remind Him that they at last had the
upper hand.
Then we are told that they “delivered Him” to the
governor. This simple statement is not just a historical detail; it
is very significant. As we have examined this drama of the final day
before the crucifixion, we have seen that Jesus foretold Judas’s
betrayal and Peter’s denial, which was a type of betrayal. Now we
see yet another betrayal of Christ. In a sense, the worst act of
betrayal was committed by the highest spiritual leaders of the Jews,
by the priests and elders of the Sanhedrin. The Greek word that is
translated as “delivered” here is paradidōmi, and this
word is often translated in the New Testament as “betrayed.”
These men, to whom God had given the responsibility of maintaining
the integrity of the spiritual life of His people, took it upon
themselves to hand Jesus over, fulfilling Old Testament prophecies
and Jesus’ own prophecies. It is nearly unthinkable that these men
could stoop to betray the Son of God into the hands of pagans. But
that is how Matthew describes their action in taking Jesus to Pontius
Pilate.
Remorse, Not Repentance
Matthew then changes direction and writes, 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, saying, “I have sinned by betraying innocent
blood.” And they said, “What is that to us? You see to it!”
(vv. 3–4). We do not know where Judas was during Jesus’ trial.
Perhaps he was there in the high priest’s home, observing the
mockery of justice firsthand. I cannot fathom what outcome he hoped
his betrayal of Jesus would bring about, but apparently he had not
foreseen Jesus’ condemnation. Thus, Matthew tells us that when he
saw that the priests and elders had condemned Jesus, he suddenly was
filled with remorse. I believe he was overcome by a sense of guilt.
However, we must not confuse this remorse with godly
repentance. The thirty pieces of silver in his pocket condemned him,
but he did not choose to flee to God for His mercy, to come in
repentance before the Lord, as David had (Psalm 51). Instead, Judas
took the money back to the priests and elders, and confessed, “I
have sinned by betraying innocent blood.” He knew he had sinned,
but he did not go to God for forgiveness. He sought a way by which he
could free himself from his guilt.
Judas could have found mercy with God if he had
sincerely repented, but he found no mercy at all with the religious
leaders. They said: “What is that to us? You see to it!” They
basically told him that his remorse and guilt were his own problems.
They could not care less. This is what happens when betrayers join
with betrayers; they are prone to turn on one another in the end.
Matthew tells us, Then he threw down the pieces of
silver in the temple and departed, and went and hanged himself
(v. 5). Judas did not quietly hand over the money. With the fiercest
movement he could muster, he threw it down in the temple and left.
Then, in a concluding postscript, Matthew tells us he went out from
there “and hanged himself.” He not only hated the silver, he
hated himself. So, he decided not only to get rid of the silver but
to get rid of Judas.
Matthew’s is the only Gospel that describes Judas’s
death, but Matthew gives us no details about the hanging. Some
scholars make a big deal about an apparent discrepancy between
Matthew’s account of Judas’s death and Luke’s in the book of
Acts. We read there:
And in those days Peter stood up
in the midst of the disciples (altogether the number of names was
about a hundred and twenty), and said, “Men and brethren, this
Scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke before by
the mouth of David concerning Judas, who became a guide to those who
arrested Jesus; for he was numbered with us and obtained a part in
this ministry.” (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. 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.) “For it is written in the Book of Psalms:
‘Let his dwelling place be desolate, and let no one live in it.’ ”
(Acts 1:15–20a)
The critics ask whether we are to understand that Judas
died by hanging himself or by falling headlong, so that his entrails
burst open? However, these two outcomes are not incompatible. Judas
may have put a noose around his neck, tied it to a tree, jumped, and
strangled, after which the rope broke and his body fell some
distance, smashing into the ground. It may also have been the case
that he hanged himself and no one took his body down, so that it hung
for some length of time and eventually burst open as it decomposed.
But in either case, his death was ignominious. His end was total
desolation.
God forbid that any of us should be like Judas. Of
course, we all fall into sin, and sometimes we remain in it for a
time, hostile to the things of God. But if we are truly in Christ, in
time, the Holy Spirit melts our hearts and brings us to repentance.
For this reason, our destinies are not those of Judas. Our ends will
not be desolation but glory.
Him Who Was Priced
Matthew writes, 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” (v. 6). Suddenly, the
priests were concerned about keeping the law. Some scholars believe
the priests must have concluded it would be unlawful to put the money
back into the treasury based on Deuteronomy 23:18, which states: “You
shall not bring the wages of a harlot or the price of a dog to the
house of the Lord your God for any vowed offering, for both of these
are an abomination to the Lord your God.” The thirty pieces of
silver had secured Jesus’ death; therefore, they were “the price
of blood.” Actually, the blood was on their hands, not on the
money, for they had given the money to buy Jesus’ death.
Nevertheless, Judas’s return of the thirty pieces of
silver was a small windfall for the priests, so they came up with a
way to use it: And they consulted together and bought with them
the potter’s field, to bury strangers in. Therefore that field has
been called the Field of Blood to this day (vv. 7–8). They
bought a field to serve as a cemetery for foreigners. It was given
the nickname “the Field of Blood” because it had been purchased
with Judas’s blood money. This may indicate that the treachery of
the priests in hiring Judas to betray Jesus was known by at least
some of the people.
This seemingly insignificant incident constituted a
remarkable fulfillment of prophecy. Matthew explains: 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, and gave them for
the potter’s field, as the Lord directed me” (vv. 9–10).
Matthew attributes this prophecy to the prophet Jeremiah, but what
Matthew cites here is actually a mosaic of references to both
Jeremiah and Zechariah (Jer. 32:6–9; Zech. 11:12, 13). That has
caused some people to choke a little. However, this kind of citation
from the Old Testament was not uncommon in biblical times. There is
evidence that the Jews maintained their copies of the Old Testament
in several scrolls, and each of the scrolls contained several books
of prophecy, of both the major prophets and the minor prophets, with
the scroll being identified by the name of the prophet whose book was
first in the scroll. In this case, the scroll of Jeremiah might have
contained not only Jeremiah’s prophecies but also Zechariah’s.
There is no textual problem here.
We need to note Matthew’s subtle but significant
charge against the religious leaders here. He says that the thirty
pieces of silver were “the value of Him who was priced, whom they
of the children of Israel priced.” Thirty pieces of silver was the
value the priests and elders put on Jesus’ life. He, the pearl of
great price, stood in their midst, and they esteemed Him as next to
worthless. How badly skewed was their value system.
As we read this episode, we need to ask ourselves about
our own value systems. How valuable is Jesus to us? He is what
Christianity is all about. He is the beloved Son of the Father. He is
the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last. He is everything. We
ought to esteem Him above all else and therefore serve Him, obey Him,
and adore Him.
13
1
Lange, J. P., & Schaff, P. (2008). A
commentary on the Holy Scriptures: Matthew (pp.
506–509). Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software.
2
Barton, B., Comfort, P., Osborne, G., Taylor, L. K., & Veerman,
D. (2001). Life
Application New Testament Commentary (p. 119).
Wheaton, IL: Tyndale.
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