Caiaphas, the chief priests, and Pharisees condemned Jesus to death.
Judas heard the death sentence. He watched Jesus, who he had followed for three years, being led away - tied up like a criminal. Judas realized what he had done. Now, he regretted his decision to lead the band of soldiers to arrest Jesus in the garden. His pocket full of thirty pieces of silver no longer filled him with excitement. The coins - the blood money - seemed to weigh him down. He met with the chief priests and elders again.
“I have sinned by betraying innocent blood,” he confessed.
“What is that to us? See to that yourself,” they responded.
Judas threw the thirty pieces of silver on the floor and left. He ended his life at the end of a rope.
When the chief priests and Pharisees found out what Judas had done, they couldn’t put the blood money back in the treasury. They bought a Potter’s field to use as a burial spot for foreigners. It became known as the Field of Blood.
Perhaps the priests and Pharisees, men whose job it was to study God’s Word and to point people to God, didn’t recognize they were fulfilling the prophecy found in Zechariah 11:12-13.
But Matthew did recognize it. Matthew, the hated tax collector turned apostle, followed the money. Matthew recognized the fulfillment of prophecies from Old Testament prophets in these events. He wrote:
“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.” Matthew 27:9-10.
Carla Killough McClafferty