Matthew 27:6-10 (NIV) The chief priests picked up the coins and said, “It is against the law to put this into the treasury, since it is blood money.” So they decided to use the money to buy the potter’s field as a burial place for foreigners. That is why it has been called the Field of Blood to this day. Then what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled: “They took the thirty silver coins, the price set on him by the people of Israel, and they used them to buy the potter’s field, as the Lord commanded me.”
One of the great ironies of the whole Easter event is that the Jewish religious leaders were so very concerned about their status as guardians of the faith that they agonized over what to do with the blood money returned by Judas before he went and hanged himself. There were rules about blood money that forbade it being put into the Lord’s treasury, so they were in a real quandary as to what to do with it.
The irony comes in when one considers that, just as few hours before encountering this quandary, they had conducted an illegal trial, recruited false witnesses to lie in a capital case, and completely railroaded a perfectly innocent man in pressuring Pilate to order the crucifixion of Jesus, all without the slightest twinge of conscience, or the smallest thought of the taint that this brought into their own souls!
But now they were concerned about not violating a comparatively incidental, man-made rule about how blood money could or could not be used. So they conferred together and decided to use the money for the “public good.” They would buy the field in the bottom land outside the city walls, where the potter’s family had dug up clay for generations, and use it as a burial ground for the non-Jewish residents of Jerusalem. That would get rid of the illicit money (money that they had illicitly paid to Judas in the first place), as well as having a place for foreigners to be buried outside the city walls so that they wouldn’t defile the holy city.
At the same time, completely unthought of, they were also fulfilling a prophecy of Zechariah (11:12-13) that sneered at how cheaply the Jewish leaders of Zechariah’s day had valued God, and the small price for which they had sold Him. By buying the potter’s field, and thus fulfilling to the letter this prophecy, the leaders of Jesus’ day were making themselves completely liable to the doom that Jesus had pronounced both over them, and over the city of Jerusalem.
Father, Jesus called these men “blind guides,” (Matthew 23:16, 26) and blind they were, unable to see their own fall into complete depravity. And so they ended up completely filling their cup with sin, and placing themselves and their whole way of life directly under Your judgment. Lord, I know that, except for Your grace working in my life, I could easily be just as bad, and just as deceived. Keep my eyes open, so that I can see and avoid anything that would lead me into sin. Help me to always walk a STRAIGHT path for Your name’s sake. Amen