SECTION VI

Jesus brought before the judgment-seat of Pilate. the end of Judas

(Mat 27:1-10. Mar 15:1. Luk 23:1. Joh 18:28)

The fanatical train of hypocrites composed of the members of the high council, which wished to give itself the credit of a gigantic theocratic procession of zealots, as it advanced with its sacrifice from the house of the high priest to the residence of Pilate, shows to us the Jewish people in that fatal moment in which it consummates the great treason against its Messiah—in which it goes and, in an act of desperation, perpetrates a self-murder on its own theocratic popular life, and thus lays the foundation for Jerusalem’s becoming for long future ages a desolation, a field of blood, a place of burial for wandering strangers.

This proceeding of the world-historical Jews found in the gloomy proceeding of Judas, in the most expressive features of frightful reality, its symbolical manifestation. It is not known what became of him after the hour of the betrayal. But it is plain that he could have found no peace. Immediately the sentence of death is pronounced upon Jesus, he is aware of it: he sees it probably because the procession then begins to form.

And, now he begins to see clearly, he is startled, and begins to repent of what he had done. His remorse is very great; for it induces him immediately to make the greatest sacrifices, by turns: his alliance with the high priests,—the pieces of silver,—his life itself. But it is evident from his first step that his repentance is terribly gloomy,—that an impure element of despair poisons it, and changes it into a sorrow unto death.

His sorrow has been sought to be explained in connection with the view, that by his deed he wished to compel the Lord to manifest Himself as the Messiah. Now, it is said, he saw that his project had failed, and with the failure remorse took possession of him. But in this case he would, in the utterance of his sorrow, have in some way expressed his nobler, better intention, and his repentance would probably have had another issue. Moreover, on this supposition he would certainly not have assumed the absolute failure of his intention in this moment. The same superstition which would have allowed him to hope that, in the moment of his being taken prisoner, Jesus would decide upon the revelation of His power, would have continued to keep him in suspense even to the moment of the crucifixion itself.¹

And, moreover, it must perhaps be supposed that something of a feeling of disappointed impure expectation poisoned his repentance. Certainly he had not conceived that the whole reward of his deed of shame was to consist in thirty pieces of silver. After such endeavours as his, he must have counted upon special marks of distinction from the high council. This expectation expresses itself instinctively in his hastening, at the beginning of his repentance, to the high priests. But it was just in this expectation that he was deceived. He must now feel that the rulers of the people have long ago dropped him again, as an instrument become needless. The Judas is already forgotten by them, or, what is still worse, they might already have begun to regard him with contempt. Under this experience his conscience may begin to work. The life of Jesus passes once more before his soul. His last words echo in his ears. And now, at the moment when Jesus is consigned by the high priests to the Romans, it is evident to him, that all the curse and all the shame of this, Israel’s great deed of sacrilege, will recoil upon him above all others. And as a compensation for all this degradation and this curse, he has only the thirty pieces of silver in his hand. The most frantic avarice could no longer maintain his apparent peace against the grief of his ambition, and against the fear of his soul—the distress of his conscience. Hence originates the terrible condition which soon drives him comfortless to death.

The great gloom of his sorrow is first of all shown in his fancying that he can repair his fault again by himself. He hastens to the high priests and elders. He goes not to Christ, but to them, in the delusion that they could, or that they would advise him. Thus gloomy is the beginning. His acknowledgment, ‘I have sinned, in that I have betrayed innocent blood,’ is a grand testimony to the righteousness of Jesus, in the mouth of a man who would gladly have disburdened his conscience with any kind of appearance of reproach against Him; but it is too little to appear as the measure of a penetrating repentance. Had such a repentance inspired him, he would have borne a more worthy testimony to the honour of Jesus; he would also have counted it a happiness to be able to die by His side, instead of one of the malefactors. That his having recourse to those enemies of Jesus was a new source of error, is shown by the harsh rejection conveyed in the abrupt words thrown to him, which were his portion, ‘What is that to us? See thou to that.’ Thus thrust forth from the cold hierarchical spirits, who doubtless, a few hours previously, had seemed as if they received him as an angel of light, he hurried forward, and now he sought for peace in the desolate temple. There he threw from him the thirty pieces of silver, probably into one of the boxes for offerings,² and retreated back into solitude (ἀνεχώρησε).³ But the offering of the blood-stained gift in the temple could not allay the deadly storm in his soul. He went thence and hanged himself.

As soon as the high priests knew of the donation which Judas had made to the temple, they scrupled to place these pieces of silver in the proper treasury of God. ‘It is not allowed,’ say they; ‘for it is the price of blood.’⁴ And then, in their pretended holy zeal, they had another sitting about the application of the thirty pieces of silver—about the blood-money which they had given to the traitor-how it might be applied in a religious manner, and yet apart from the sanctuary. This is again so characteristic a feature of refined sanctimonious wickedness, that here also only a want of perception could attribute such a trait to the invention of the Church. They came to the conclusion of buying the potter’s field, and of making it into a place of burial for strange pilgrims. Hence, says the Evangelist, that field, well known in Jerusalem, is named the field of blood to this very day. He adds, Then was fulfilled the word which was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah, when he said, They took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him that was valued, whom they of the children of Israel did value, and gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord appointed me.

It is first of all remarkable, that this passage, literally, does not appear at all in the prophet Jeremiah. And then, again, that the passage in the prophet Zec 11:13, to which evidently the quotation of the Evangelist primarily refers, has not been literally quoted. This phenomenon has been sought to be accounted for in many ways.⁵ It is probably best to suppose here an entirely free application of the prophetic word by the Evangelist. In the eleventh chapter, the prophet Zechariah depicts the misery of Israel, as it is being destroyed by the wickedness of its shepherds. He himself, the prophet, is speaking in symbolical manner in the name of Jehovah, as the representative of the chief shepherd. He rules in this capacity over shepherds and sheep, with the staff suffering, and the staff gentleness. But the corruption prevails to that degree that he sees himself compelled to break to pieces the staff gentleness, which up to that time he had wielded on behalf of the suffering, nobler sheep, whereby the existing covenant was abolished. Therewith also precisely his service of chief shepherd over the people is at an end; and in order to bring to light the greatness of its ingratitude, he requires that his reward should be weighed out to him. The sheep of the flock, however, think so little of him, that they appoint for him a compensation of thirty pieces of silver,—this contemptibly small sum, which signifies a trifling amount,—whereby not only his assiduity, but his life itself is put at a value, since his life was pledged for the sheep. But now, when Jehovah has been thus despised in His chief shepherd, He Himself comes forward as the speaker. Cast it away ‘for the potter,’⁶ He says—the goodly price that I was prized at of them. And, says the prophet, I took the thirty pieces of silver, and threw them into the house of the Lord ‘for the potter.’

It is now probably evident that the prophet is here depicting the Old Testament theocracy in its universalism, consequently in its typical features, as they are fulfilled in Messianism—that he here depicts it to its close, even to the abrogation of the ancient covenant with Israel, expressed by the final breaking of the staff ‘gentleness.’ Hence the prophet represents Jehovah as He is valued in His Messiah by the people at the close of that covenant, after all His care. Even the circumstance that the thirty pieces of silver are indicated as bad or polluted coin, which was to be thrown away, or in any case to be melted down, is deeply significant.

Thus that passage in Zechariah, penetrated with typical elements, could not be overlooked by the Evangelist. Especially the fundamental thoughts which distinguished it were entirely prophetic. There and here Jehovah had been valued at thirty pieces of silver: there, in the work of His prophet; here, in the life of the Messiah. There and here this price had been destined to be treated with rejection, to be exchanged. And yet the Evangelist found the literal application of the passage difficult, on account of formal dissimilarities between the typical and the real transaction. He intimates an unlikeness: what was ordered to the prophet to do there, Judas and the high priests in common perform here, in that the former brings the money into the temple, the latter lay it out in the valley of Gehinnom. Moreover, in that place of the prophet, the circumstance, that instead of the money a potter’s field was bought, was not expressed. But this circumstance was typically foreshadowed in substance with great clearness by the prophet Jeremiah, namely, in Jer 32:1-44. There the prophet is commissioned by the Lord, at a time when the hope of the people appears to be gone, when the Babylonish captivity is impending, actually to buy a field at Anathoth, which his relative offers to him for purchase. He was thereby to put forward a symbolical sign that there still exist the promise of God and the hope of the prophets for the restoration of the land and of the people. The prophet amplifies this comforting thought throughout the whole chapter. He describes how the land is profaned, especially by the service of Moloch, in the valley Ben-Hinnom (Jer 32:35)-how it must therefore become a desert. Nevertheless, he says, the land should again be dwelt in. In this land, given up to desolation, shall still be bought fields for money (Jer 32:43), in the land of Benjamin and around Jerusalem, and thus round about through the land.

This then is probably the living and great word of Jeremiah,⁷ which the Evangelist quotes according to the meaning, whilst he more closely defines it by the representations of the prophet Zechariah. Jeremiah bought a despised neglected place in the land, for a sign that others also would come and buy such abandoned places. And thus, after all, these came and bought the most abominable spot in the land, the potter’s field in the valley of Gehinnom,—bought it in the hope that in future times many pilgrims would continue to come to Jerusalem, and actually bought it for the price which had been paid for the Lord Himself. They knew not what they did, the Evangelist seems to say; but unconsciously they established a great and hopeful sign for the future, in a similar manner to that in which Caiaphas unconsciously was constrained to utter the great doctrine of the atonement in that sentence, It is better that one man should die than that the whole nation should perish.

The citation of Matthew in this place very much reminds one of that quotation, The prophets said that He should be called a Nazarene.⁸

The Apostle Peter also, according to Luke (Act 1:17), spoke of the end of Judas, in that passage wherein, after the ascension, he refers to the vacancy which had arisen in the company of disciples by the falling away of Judas. ‘He was numbered with us,’ he says, ‘and had obtained the lot of this ministry. Now this man purchased a field with the reward of iniquity; and falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out. And it was known unto all the dwellers at Jerusalem; insomuch as that field is called, in their proper tongue, Aceldama, that is to say, The field of blood.’ Previously the apostle said, that what the Holy Ghost, by the mouth of David, spake before concerning Judas, must needs have been fulfilled; and now he cites the psalms referred to: ‘His habitation must become desolate, and let no man dwell therein,’ is freely declared in the first one (Psa 69:25): ‘His bishoprick let another take,’ runs the second (Psa 109:8). The first passage expresses the positive curse which befalls the enemies of the true servant of God, who can say of himself, ‘The zeal of Thine house hath consumed me, and the reproaches of them that reproached Thee fall upon me.’ The second is associated with the very terrible words of the curse which is pronounced upon those who returned to the singer, consecrated to God, his love with hatred. Both the psalms express in powerful forms of feeling the presentiment of that experience which the Messiah must undergo on the part of His worst enemy, and are also certainly psalms which have found their fulfilment in the life of Jesus.

It has often been found difficult to harmonize⁹ the differences between the account of Matthew and that of Peter (according to the statement of Luke), especially in the two critical points of the narrative. According to Matthew, for instance, Judas met his death by hanging himself; according to Peter, by a fall. According to the former, the high priests bought the potter’s field; according to Peter, one might think that he himself purchased for himself that piece of ground with the pieces of silver.¹⁰ But even if we had to do with the narrative of Peter alone, we should still be compelled to ask, whether it is actually the meaning of that narrative that Judas bought that piece of ground with his money. What is intended here by this dry notice, in a place which expresses the highest contrast with rhetorical vivacity? This Judas, the apostle desires to say, had with the others obtained the glorious lot of carrying on with them the apostolic service—was, just as they were, appointed to the inheritance of the whole world; and now that corner of a field in the valley of Gehinnom is given to him as the reward of unrighteousness. And how is it fallen to his lot? First of all, by his terrible death-fall the plot of ground became his own by his being precipitated on to its soil, bursting asunder, and, so to speak, dissolving into the dreadful inheritance. Thus, first of all, the plot of ground received the name of the field of blood among the inhabitants of Jerusalem, who were aware of the circumstance of his suicide; although the more informed knew also that the field might be named, on altogether a different ground, the field of blood—namely, on account of the blood-money for which it was acquired. In this manner the apostle has at the same time hinted at the inducement which might lead the high council to buy the field for the thirty pieces of silver. The first consideration which led to this was the burial of Judas. The place which by the suicide of Judas had lately become infamous, might easily be attainable at a cheap rate, and it was an obvious thing to bury the shattered body quickly in the same spot where his bowels were scattered. The high council had, moreover, its special reasons for getting rid of the remembrance of Judas as soon as possible. But since the wretched man had once destined his money for a pious purpose, the high council clung to the notion of making a charitable application of it. And it was entirely worthy of the inventive genius of the pharisaic spirit, that they appropriated the piece of field in which Judas lay buried for a burial-place for the strangers who should die in Jerusalem.

As to the manner of the disciple’s death itself, Casaubon has already discovered the harmony: that, according to Matthew, Judas hanged himself over an abyss, the rope gave way, or the branch to which he hung broke, and thus, according to the account of Peter, he fell down headlong and was burst asunder. Against this lively representation it has been objected, that it is entirely inexplicable why Matthew should in this case only relate one half of the proceeding, and Peter only the other.¹¹ This question is answered, however, from the different points of view of the two men. Matthew wished to depict the despair of Judas in his death, but the last critical act of that was, that he hanged himself. What was beyond that, the Evangelist neglects, because he had to represent there the characteristic conduct of the Sanhedrim with respect to their Old Testament types. Peter, on the other hand, was concerned beforehand with the lot of Judas—with his office and inheritance vacated, which he had forsaken that he might go to his own place (acquired by him and suitable to him), (ver. 25). Thus he looks at his end in the special purpose and result, in the moment when, shattered in death, he was spread out on the field of blood, and thus in the special meaning perished in his inheritance. The manner in which the obtaining by purchase of the field for the thirty pieces of silver occurred, Peter could not describe, since it was in his mind to represent, in a painfully rhetorical antithesis, the ironical working of the curse, that instead of the curse-laden money, the disciple should only receive an inheritance equally accursed.

The time which elapsed from the beginning of the despair of Judas to his end is not specified, but probably the single incidents unfolded themselves towards his death in rapid succession. Its beginning, however, leads us back to the death-journey of his people—the procession of the Sanhedrim.

From the sixth year after the birth of Christ, Judea, with the deposition of Archelaus, had lost its independence, and, together with Samaria, had been annexed by Cæsar Augustus to the Roman province of Syria. Judea was thus under the Roman proprætor or præses of Syria, but was governed by a special procurator, who was, indeed, subordinate to the proprætor, but generally occupied the place of the governor, commanded the troops of his district, exercised justice, and managed the administration. This procurator usually resided in Cæsarea by the sea; but he came often to Jerusalem, especially at the time of the festivals, and, indeed, accompanied by a body of troops. It was natural that at a time when the entire power of the people of Israel was gathered together, and dangerous disturbances might so easily arise, the Roman power should be induced to present themselves in their highest dignity in this place to the people subdued and striving against their bondage. Besides this political necessity, however, the governors had also an individual interest in being present at the great festival-times of this remarkable people, especially at the Passover. At this time were assembled here the Jewish great men (as, for instance, at this time, Herod Antipas is represented as present from Galilee); hither came many dignified strangers, partly from curiosity, partly from religious creed; and, under these circumstances, a showy worldly life must needs have been developed.

Moreover, it was characteristic of Pilate to wish to be there, for both aspects of the festival excited and attracted him with equal force. He liked to let the Jews feel his power—to treat them with the most imperious insolence, to practise acts of violence and oppression, for which especially there was abundant opportunity at such festivals.¹² Moreover, it was in accordance with the frivolous worldliness of the weak-charactered, inconstant man, that precisely the worldly side of the Passover-fest attracted him strongly. And thus at this time also he might have promised himself considerable enjoyment, without foreboding that this festival was also ordained to sit in judgment upon his character—to present him to posterity as a type of the moral powerlessness of the proud world-spirit as it had been cultivated among the masterful Romans, and to place him in a position in which he laid the more definite foundation for his subsequent tragical end.

The procession arranged by the Sanhedrim went from the session’s hall of the high council over the temple-mountain in a northerly direction to the palace of the governor, which stood at the northern foot of the mountain. As the house of the high priest was on the northern declivity of the upper city, or of the hill of Zion, and as a high covered way ran along over the valley Tyropæum, which united the temple-mountain with the hill of Zion, Jesus had probably been previously brought in the train of the high council over this high covered way into the council-chamber on the temple-mountain; and, as we may suppose that the Galilean prince, Herod, when he was in Jerusalem, resided in the palace of Herod, which likewise was situated on the northern side of Mount Zion, so Jesus was probably at a subsequent period led backwards and forwards once more over that high covered way from the common hall to the temple-mountain—an ignominious spectacle for the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

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Notes

1. Strauss takes great pains, in his section on the death of the traitor (ii. 480), to disconnect the end of Judas as well from a relation to the rope as to the fall, in order to, leave him to ‘retire into obscurity’ after his ‘departure from the company of Jesus’—‘in which obscurity the historical knowledge of his subsequent fate was lost’. He attempts to explain the origin of the several narratives concerning his end from the Passages of the Psalms referred to. What wholly different forms, however, from those of the evangelic accounts must have originated in a mythical counterfeit of the evangelical history according to externally conceived passages of the Psalms, he has himself illustrated (p. 490); and how freely, not especially in this case, Matthew has expounded, not perhaps the New Testament history according to the Old Testament, but the Old Testament according to the New Testament history.

2. Pilate caused disturbances by his acts of violence in Judæa and Samaria, was accused to Vetellius, the præses of Syria, suspended, and sent to Rome by him, where he was deposed about the year 36 after Christ. Subsequently he is said to have made away with himself under the Cæsar Caius Caligula. Many judgments have been passed upon his character. Compare Winer’s R. W. B., the article concerning him. Neander, 459.

3. The high priest’s palace after the exile was situated at the foot of the Mount Zion (Neh 3:14-21); whilst the Asmonæans established a secular fortress on the northern side of the temple-mountain, named Baris, which Herod the Great restored anew, and named Antonia, in honour of Antonius.—(Joseph. de Bello Jud. i. 21, 1). Sepp, upon these notices, remarks (iii. 465): ‘For the rest, we find here declared as on a monument, by the position of the different judicial palaces on Zion on the one side, and on Moriah on the other side, that the spiritual jurisdiction was secularized, and the secular power was established in the place of the spiritual.’ Doubtless Pilate now dwelt in the palace which was connected with the fortress Antonia, where the soldiery were stationed at his command. There also was the prætorium, the house of the governor and judge—as the tradition, moreover, has assumed. But the special palace of Herod was situated in the upper city, where Herod built two gorgeous palaces. (See Josephus as above, and v. 4, 4.)

1) [And, as Ellicott very distinctly shows (p. 340, note), the expressions of our Lord Himself concerning Judas (John xvii. 12; Matt. xxvi. 24) militate strongly against the idea that the traitor only wished to force our Lord to declare Himself.—ED.]

2) [It is decidedly against this supposition that Judas is said to have cast the money down ἐν τῷ ναῷ,, in the holy place, where only the priests might enter. Meyer sees the violence of his despair in this, that it hurried him into a forbidden place. Were there a dropping of the money into a box intended, not ῥίψας but  βάλῶν would have been used. Comp. Mark xii. 41-4. Besides, that such an interpretation detracts considerably from the power of the scene.—ED.]

3) That Judas, after the offering of the money in the temple, before his suicide, experienced one more interval of solitude, is suggested not only by the expression ἀνεχώρησε, but also by the following passage, καί ἀπελθών, &c. As soon as he had confessed his sin, offered a human satisfaction, then made a donation to the temple, he tries to live as an anchoret (a monk), but all in vain ! [So Bynsous, who says (ii. 430) the word is used de secessu in locum desertum, atque ab hominum consortio remotum.'—ED.]

4) Compare Deut. xxiii. 18.

5) Olshausen, iv. 201 ; Friedlieb, 101. [The leading suppositions are, that Ἱερεμίου is a wrong reading, that the prophecy existed in some writing of Jeremiah which is now lost, or was uttered by him but not recorded, or was erased by the Jews from the existing book of his prophecy. Meyer and Alford follow Augustine in supposing that Matthew has here made an error through want of accuracy in memory. Lightfoot’s view is peculiar: that Jeremiah stood at the head of the prophets, and that therefore any of them might be quoted under his name, as any book of the Hagiographa may be cited under the title of ‘the Psalms.’ Calvin’s decision is perhaps as much as can be made of the difficulty: ‘Quomodo Hieremiw nomen obrepserit, me nescire fateor, nec anxie laboro. Hieremim nomen errore positum esse pro Zacharia, res ipsa ostendit : quia nihil tale apud Hieremiam legitur, vel etiam quod accedat.’ Bynieus has carefully collected all the opinions up to his time (ii. 450-78).—ED.]

6) I can only thus explain the determining expression אֶל־הַיּוֹצֵד as it is more closely defined by the circumstance that the pieces of silver were brought into the temple, and according to the rendering of the LXX., εἰς τὸ χωνευτήριον. In the temple there was probably a reservoir which contained the metal for melting, and close by also a division for worthless material, with the inscription אֶל־הַיּוֹצֵד ‘for the potter,’ or in other words, ‘destined for the potter,’ who provided the temple-vessels—to be taken away into the valley of Gehinnom. "The LXX. had that arrangement in view; and in order to explain the unintelligible word, chose the comprehensive definition: for the melting-furnace. The conjecture of Hitzig, that instead of יוֹצֵד should be read יוֹצָד = אוֹצָד treasury—temple treasury, God’s coffer—departs from the obvious and appropriate meaning, a instead, adopts one which contradicts the connection. For it cannot be the purpose of Jehovah to lay up these pieces of silver as a treasure in His treasure-coffer. On the grammatical difficulties of this interpretation, see Hengstenberg (Christology, iv. 40). But if the word is referred directly to the potter in the valley of Gehinnom—so that the expression would convey the meaning of ‘to an unclean place’ (‘to the dogs,’ or ‘to the hangman, according to Hengstenberg), it gives, it is true, a very suitable thought, but the thought is still not appropriately Suggested : but especially this is true of the circumstance that the prophet was first of all to place the money in the temple. Hengstenberg indeed gives a more exact explanation of the latter destination. Because the temple was the place where the people appeared before the presence of the Lord, there must the people be reproached with their shameful ingratitude, by the giving back of the contemptible piece. From thence it must be conveyed to the potter. The LXX. induces us to abide by the above explanation. It is acknowledged that in the temple the several boxes for offerings had fill their special destinations. One thing might still he asked, Ought not the potters of the temple also to have charge of the business of melting down and remolding for themselves?

7)  Olshausen, indeed, thinks that the reference of the quotation to Jer. xxxii. 6 deserves no consideration.

8) See above, vol. i. p. 316.

9) On the several attempts at harmonizing, see Strauss, ii 48.

10) In connection with this is the different motive for the naming of the field the field of blood as given in Matthew and in Peter. See what follows.

11) Strauss, ii. 483.

12) Luke xiii. 1