Matthew 27:9 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Matthew 27:9

Comments

The immediate source of the quotation is Zechariah 11:12-13. In that chapter Zechariah predicts the end of God’s covenant with the Jewish nation. Israel is called the flock of slaughter – because of what is coming – and the dissolving of the covenant is represented under the figure of the breaking of two staffs – Beauty and Bands, better translated as ‘favour’ and ‘union’. Zechariah links the breaking of the covenant with Israel’s rejection and murder of its Messiah. To show how paltry was the estimation of the nation for the Lord Jesus, Zechariah acts out a prophetic drama for them. They are to set a value on the prophet and pay him the price that they think he is worth for his ministry to them. Zechariah is taking the part of the incarnate Son of God himself, for it is his rejection that will trigger God’s final judgment on the nation. The price they set is 30 pieces of silver, the token price of a lost slave, between £70 and £370. Zechariah ironically calls this a ‘goodly price’, and he records, ‘I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the LORD’. The prophecy seems obscure; no explanation is given in Zechariah as to what the potter is doing in the house of the Lord. There is highly figurative language involved here: as always, the fulfilment makes clear the meaning of God’s word. T V Moore comments that to cast something to the potter was a proverbial phrase like our phrase, ‘throw it to the dogs’. It came about he says because the potter for the temple had his shop in the valley of Hinnom because of the clay found there, a polluted place in the minds of the Jews because of the idolatry once practiced there. That may be how they understood it, but the fulfilment has another explanation and is most literal. The potter was evidently the owner of the field which was purchased with Judas’ money. It would have been very difficult to make sense of this prophecy before it came to pass, but when it came about, it was fulfilled to the letter, for Judas threw down the thirty pieces of silver in the temple, ‘the house of the Lord’, where he had gone because the chief priests were assembled there. There are so many points of agreement. The amount of money was the same – thirty pieces of silver; this was the price which the children of Israel set on Zechariah – acting in the place of Christ; Zechariah threw the money into the house of the Lord – a most unusual and unexplained thing to do; the money was thrown to the potter – another hard-to-understand feature of the prophecy, but which made perfect sense once it was fulfilled. At the same time the prophecy must be interpreted in ways which would have been very hard to predict in advance. This is a most interesting lesson in how the language and features of prophecy are to be understood, as seen by their fulfilment. The prophecy is obscure; the fulfilment is plain. Many prophecies will never be fully understood until they are fulfilled according to God’s plan. The insulting price set on the Messiah is a mark of shame on the chief priests, whose actions stand for the rejection of the whole nation. The events which lay behind Judas actions are hidden out of sight in the prophecy, but in the fulfilment they make perfect sense. The compressed statement that the money was thrown to the potter in the house of the Lord, is revealed with complete consistency and clarity once the event takes place.

Application

We should have the utmost confidence in the word of the Lord and in the fulfilment of all its prophecies, however obscure they seem to us before their fulfilment. Time and again the Lord has proved that his word is perfectly fulfilled, and those prophecies whose fulfilment is yet future, can be trusted not to fail. The word of God cannot be broken.

Did Judas know of this prophecy, or of Psalm 69:25 or Psalm 109:6? Peter probably would have known these by heart, perhaps Judas also. What difference would it have made to Judas to know his acts of betrayal were prophesied beforehand? Would he blame God for what he did? No, he knew that it was his desires that had led him. He could detect within himself the lust for the thirty of silver. He could sense the comparatively small value he had set on the Messiah. Every step he had taken was his step. No one had forced him to do it. And yet he would be all the more horrified to find out that all this had been written in advance, long ago: this was his divinely appointed destiny. The sense of sin is more than he can bear and he ends his life and perishes just as Scripture had said he would.

Questions

But what do we make of the fact that Matthew attributes this prophecy not to Zechariah, but to Jeremiah? One suggests that Matthew had a slip of memory, but to say that is to put all inspiration of Scripture in question. Another says that a scribe has remembered Jeremiah’s prophecy about the potter and wrongly changed the attribution, but, since this is the universal reading, to say this is to cast doubt on the preservation of Scripture. Some argue that Zechariah’s prophecy is a fuller development of the prophecy of Jeremiah 18 and 19, but Matthew fulfilment appears to make this impossible. Some explain this by saying that the prophets were grouped together and named by the first book in the group – Zechariah being in the group which had Jeremiah first. Hendriksen offers what he calls an incomplete solution, to the extent that a solution is possible. He relates Jeremiah 19 to the fulfilment of Matthew 27:8 – ‘Wherefore that field was called, The field of blood’ – for Jeremiah speaks there of Tophet, the valley of the son of Hinnom (where human sacrifices had been offered (Jeremiah 7:31-32)), where ‘the field of blood’ was said to be located. That was a place for burial (Jeremiah 19:11; Matthew 27:7). Hendriksen concludes that two prophecies are referred to, and the major prophet is named without naming the lesser prophet, Zechariah.

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Introduction

Matthew 27:9 Commentary and Bible Study