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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 537. The Man
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Through the deep shadows that gather round the closing scenes of the life of Christ on earth one sinister figure has arrested every eye-Judas of Kerioth. On no human head has such a cloud of infamy descended: in all human history there is no man who has been regarded with such complete abhorrence. His entire biography is included in a dozen sentences, yet so vivid is each touch that the effect is of a portrait etched in “lines of living fire.”
Thus do the things that have produced fruit, nay, whose fruit still grows, turn out to be the things chosen for record and writing of; which things alone were great, and worth recording. The Battle of Châlons, where Hunland met Rome, and the Earth was played for, at sword-fence, by two earth-bestriding giants, the sweep of whose swords cut kingdoms in pieces, hovers dim in the languid remembrance of a few; while the poor police-court treachery of a wretched Iscariot, transacted in the wretched land of Palestine, centuries earlier, for “thirty pieces of silver,” lives clear in the heads, in the hearts of all men.1 [Note: Carlyle, On History Again.]
I would fain see the face of him who, having dipped his hand in the same dish with the Son of Man, could afterwards betray Him. I have no conception of such a thing; nor have I ever seen any picture (not even Leonardo's very fine one) that gave me the least idea of it.2 [Note: Charles Lamb, in Hazlitt's Table Talk.]
1. The name Judas is the Greek form of the Heb. Judah, which, in Gen_29:35, is derived from the verb “to praise,” and is taken as meaning “one who is the subject of praise.” The etymology is disputed, but in its popular sense it suggests a striking paradox when used of one whose name became a synonym for shame. Another Apostle bore this common Jewish name, but “Judas” now means the Betrayer of Jesus. His sin has stamped the word with such evil significance that it has become the classname of perfidious friends who are “no better than Judases.”
It was over and over again forbidden by the Church that a child should be baptized by the name of Jude. To this day the name probably does not exist outside Mr. Hardy's novel. With regard to great sinners in general, and Judas in particular, the feeling was, “I will not make mention of their names within my lips,” “Let his name be clean put out.”1 [Note: R. L. Gales, Studies in Arcady, 181.]
2. Iscariot is understood to be equivalent to ish-Kerioth, that is, “man of Kerioth.” The epithet is applied in the Gospels both to Judas and to his father Simon (Joh_6:71; Joh_13:26). Now Kerioth was a town in South Judæa. The other disciples were Galilæans all. The southern Jews regarded the northerners with a certain superiority. “Thou art a Galilæan. Thy speech bewrayeth thee,” said the town servants of the high priest. Is it possible to imagine that some of this spirit of superiority, utterly at variance with the ideal of fellowship, alienated Judas from his brethren? If it did, it is psychologically probable that Judas would attribute the lack of sympathy to them. They would appear reserved and unsociable, and in his own view he would seem the injured one. Such blindness is almost invariably characteristic of the pride which causes estrangement from one's fellows.
We need not cross the English Channel in search of racial differences. We have them in our own island. Look at the Keltic fringe on the other side of Offa's Dyke. The Welsh are mystical, poetical, imaginative, and emotional. We Saxons, with our blend of Danish and Norman blood, are stolid, practical, tenacious, and indomitable. Dissimilarities quite as striking prevailed among the Jews in the Holy Land. The natives of the south were proud, dreamy, austere, and passionate. They were fired with an unquenchable hope to restore the power and the splendour of the reign of David and Solomon. A desire to repeat and surpass the exploits of the Maccabees tingled in their veins. The Judeans were fanatical patriots.2 [Note: W. Wakinshaw, John's Ideal City, 123.]
3. When and where Jesus met Judas we cannot tell, but it was probably in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem. The unwritten chapters in the history of Judas may be easily supplied from what we know of the movements of the time, and of the relations of Christ with His other disciples. There was certainly an earlier and different Judas, who possessed some striking characteristics of mind and spirit, or he would never have been deliberately selected by Jesus for the toils and honours of the Apostolate. It is natural that John should speak of him in the bitterest terms, for he was deeply penetrated by a horror of his crime; but the action of Christ in calling Judas to the Apostolate must be weighed against the denunciation of his fellow-Apostle. Somewhere in the past, which can only be conjectured, we may discern a youthful Judas, growing up in the devout adherence of the Jewish faith, conscious of unusual powers and distinguished by a sombre heat of enthusiasm, filled with patriotic ardour and deeply moved by the Messianic hope. In due time this youth finds himself in the presence of Jesus of Nazareth. He listens to a voice which stirs his heart as no human voice has ever stirred it. He feels the eye of Jesus resting on him in solicitation and intimate appeal. The current of his life is turned instantly, and he leaves all to follow this new Divine Teacher.
Smetham's perception of things in the Bible, his putting of them in a new light, is sometimes like an apocalyptic sunrise. Through the incumbent darkness of some grim episode he sends a shaft of unexpected light, which transfigures all our prepossessions. Here is a case in point. In St. John's Gospel, at the eighteenth chapter, is told the gruesome story of that arch-renegade Judas, in the act of treachery which has placed his name as a byword of heinous vice upon the page of universal history. There is no written comment. But the third verse is flanked by a masterstroke of pictorial suggestion: a tiny etching half an inch square depicts a child, lying upon its cradle-pillow, with a face of captivating infantile sweetness, and large wondering eyes. Underneath is written with laconic simplicity, “Judas Iscariot.” What! Was that incarnation of treason ever a child? By some lapse of logic it has always seemed as though he had leaped in full-orbed criminality upon the world which he disgraced. It strains one's faculty of imagination to think of Judas and cradle-songs. Yet is the homiletic painter true. Stoddard the poet is also right:
We lie, in infancy, at heaven's gate;
Around our pillows, golden ladders rise.
The holy office of motherhood, since the betrayer's day, has wasted its sweetness a thousand times upon the embryo malefactor. Many a branded and blighted life to-day looks back with yearning, through a rain of scalding tears, at childhood's Paradise Lost, saying:
Happy those early days,
When I shined in my angel infancy;
Before I taught my soul to fancy aught
But a white celestial thought.
Before I had the black art to dispense,
A separate sin to every sense;
But felt through all this fleshly dress
Bright gleams of everlastingness!
Aye! “Judas also which betrayed him” was once a child. The childhood of Jesus, the infancy of the good, are phases of alluring charm in the life of man; but the childhood of Judas is a new thought in the old story of the Fall. It is an unaccustomed key in the broken music of our discordant existence.1 [Note: W. G. Beardmore, James Smetham, 80.]
Oh, a new star, a new star
Blazed like a lamp of gold.
For closely pressed to Mary's breast
The Saviour Jesus lay at rest,
As prophets had foretold.
(But little Judas, as he slept,
Stirred in his mother's arms and wept.)
Oh, the night wind, the night wind
A new song found to sing,
Caught from the gleaming angel choir,
With harps of light and tongues of fire,
To praise the new-born King.
(But little Judas, as he slept,
Stirred in his mother's arms and wept.)
Oh, the worship, the worship,
And myrrh and incense sweet,
Which shepherd kings from far away
Had brought with golden gifts to lay
At the Saviour Jesus' feet.
(But little Judas, as he slept,
Stirred in his mother's arms and wept.)
Oh, the shadow, the shadow
Of the cross upon the hill!
But yet the Babe who was to bear
The whole world's weight of sin and care,
On Mary's heart lay still.
(But Judas' mother, with a cry,
Kissed him and wept, she knew not why.)
4. Judas is found among the twelve Apostles. Almost from the first the man must have had a baffled sense of unfitness for his calling, mingled with eager desire to secure the great things which Jesus promised, and which the miracles attested His power to grant. As each day led others up from their old levels, by the purifying tidings of an unearthly kingdom, of vast rewards to be received “with persecutions,” and how they should be killed and crucified, yet not a hair of their heads should perish, all was assuredly a blind paradox to the earthly heart of Judas, causing him to lie silent, warily abstinent from comment and from question, feeling his way towards the position which would best suit him in the expected kingdom by securing now the poor treasurership of the Galilæan group. By what intrigues he excluded or ejected from that post Matthew, whose experience as a publican fitted him so specially for it, we cannot tell; but we can well imagine that he would endeavour, by energy in the direction which gave scope to his earthly instincts, to hide from others, and for a season from himself, the lifelessness and lovelessness of his spirit. For such is the method of all declining souls.
It is St. John who tells us that Judas carried the purse. After describing the anointing of Christ's feet by Mary at the feast in Bethany, the Evangelist continues: “But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples, which should betray him, saith: Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor? Now this he said, not because he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and having the bag, took away what was put therein” (Joh_12:4-6). This fact that Judas carried the bag is again referred to by the same Evangelist in his account of the Last Supper (Joh_13:29). The Synoptic Gospels do not notice this office of Judas, nor do they say that it was he who protested at the alleged waste of the ointment. But it is significant that both in Matthew and in Mark the account of the anointing is closely followed by the story of the betrayal: “Then one of the twelve, who was called Judas Iscariot, went unto the chief priests, and said, What are ye willing to give me, and I will deliver him unto you?” (Mat_26:14-15); “And Judas Iscariot, he that was one of the twelve, went away unto the chief priests, that he might deliver him unto them. And they, when they heard it, were glad, and promised to give him money” (Mar_14:10-11). In both these accounts it will be noticed that Judas takes the initiative: he is not tempted and seduced by the priests, but approaches them of his own accord. St. Luke tells the same tale, but adds another touch by ascribing the deed to the instigation of Satan: “And Satan entered into Judas, who was called Iscariot, being one of the number of the twelve. And he went away, and communed with the chief priests and captains, how he might deliver him unto them. And they were glad, and covenanted to give him money. And he consented, and sought opportunity to deliver him unto them in the absence of the multitude” (Luk_22:3-6).
The Golden Legend says: “Then it happed that he was angry and sorry for the ointment that Mary Magdalene poured on the feet and head of our Lord Jesus Christ, and said that it was worth three hundred pence, and so much he had lost, and therefore sold he Jesus Christ for thirty pieces of that money, of which every penny was worth tenpence, and so he received three hundred pence. Or after that, some say, he ought to have of all the gifts given to Jesus Christ the tenth penny, and so he recovered thirty pieces of that he sold Him.” Legend has invested these thirty pieces with a long mysterious history. They were made of the precious metal brought by Adam out of Paradise, and were coined by Ninus, King of Assyria. Abraham carried them into the land of Canaan, and with them Joseph was bought by the Ishmaelites. They were in the treasures of Pharaoh, of Solomon, of Nebuchadnezzar. The Magi offered them to the Holy Child. At last, by command of Jesus Himself, they were given to the temple at Jerusalem, whence they were paid by the chief priests to Judas, and afterwards to the soldiers who watched the tomb.1 [Note: R. L. Gales, Studies in Arcady, 176.]
5. Is it to be wondered at that the bargain with the high priests should have seized on the imagination of Christendom? Can we wonder that Dante should have placed Judas in the lowest circles of the dammed, sole partner with Satan of the uttermost dark? But terrible as is the mere suggestion of the betrayal, its details are more repellent still. It was essential to the carrying out of his bargain that Judas should keep in close touch with our Lord and His disciples. So even when they went to the Upper Room to keep their last Passover together Judas went with them. His presence made impossible the harmony our Lord desired for their last meeting; and He was so troubled that He could not keep the guilty secret between Judas and Himself. So it came to pass, while they sat at meat, that the face of Jesus was shadowed with concern. With amazement the little circle of the disciples heard Him say, “Verily, I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me.” The words moved the true comrades of the Christ to deep disquietude. Once again our Lord was hinting that one of them was a traitor. Reclining in the dim glow of the flickering lamps, they searched each others' faces in the endeavour to scrutinize each others'souls. While they were troubled thus, the Master determined on one fina' appeal to Judas. In the East it is a mark of special consideration to dip a piece of bread or meat in the sauce or gravy that forms part of a meal, and to pass it to the guest whom one has it in one's heart to honour specially. With a heart full of pity for the traitor, Jesus dipped in the dish and gave the sop to Judas Iseariot. Such an act was bound either to shame him out of his evil purpose or to harden perversity into determined wickedness. It was the latter that happened. The favour of his Lord did but confirm the evil in the heart of Judas; and, recognizing the true inwardness of what had taken place, he rose from the couch and passed from the room. Sullen of soul and hardened of spirit, he passed down the steps and crossed the shadowed courtyard into the narrow and winding city street. Then in the darkness he was alone. “He then having received the sop went immediately out: and it was night.” What else should it be?
When Jesus is speaking of His betrayal he uses two phrases calculated to aggravate, were that possible, the enormity of the offence. He describes the traitor as “he that eateth with me,” “he that dippeth with me in the dish” (Mar_14:18; Mar_14:20). These expressions are both designed to bring out the same fact, that the traitor is breaking the sacred bond of table-fellowship. It is well known what importance was attached to this law of table-fellowship in ancient times. Once a person shared a meal with another, he became bound to him by closest ties, and was required to protect him to the best of his ability. Judas in betraying his Master is breaking this sacred bond. In St. John's Gospel, Jesus quotes, with reference to him, the words of the Psalmist who had bewailed like treachery on the part of one who had broken the law of hospitality: “He that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me.”1 [Note: G. Wauchope Stewart, in The Sunday Magazine, March 1910, p. 389.]
The scene of the Supper has stamped itself upon men's minds as few others in all history have done, and has evoked a whole world of wonderment and fancy. It is unnecessary to mention the superstition about the number thirteen. “He sat down with the twelve.” Judas sat on the right hand of Our Lord, between St. John and St. Peter. One thinks of the last days of those three comrades-of the hideous death of Judas, of the world-making martyrdom of St. Peter, of the figure described by the great Russian seer, the old St. John, all white, a keeper of bees, smelling of wax and honey. In Leonardo's picture the hand of Judas is upon the salt-cellar, which he upsets as he says, “Lord, is it I?” This little detail, carried all over Europe as the Faith spread, may have given rise to the superstition expressed in the proverb, “He who spills salt, spills sorrow.” The idea that the ill effects may be warded off by throwing the spilt salt over the left shoulder is, no doubt, explained by the old belief that the Good Angel is stationed on the right side of every man, the Demon on the left.2 [Note: R. L. Gales, Studies in Arcady, 177.]
6. A few hours later, Judas led towards a garden which was one of the favourite resting-places of his Lord a great multitude with swords and clubs, with lanterns, torches, and weapons. They were the myrmidons of the high priests; and their instructions were to capture our Lord and to bring Him bound to Annas. Out of the city gate, across the brook, into the shadow of the trees they passed, the traitor leading the way. Then, beneath the murky glare of the torches, he saw the face of the Christ, white with spiritual strain. With an amazing refinement of villainy he kissed our Lord, that the band might know whom to capture. The Master must have shuddered at his touch, but even then He spoke kindly to him; and before long, with Jesus as prisoner, the melancholy procession started anew towards the city.
Not only is kissing a mark of homage: it is still in the East the salutation of intimate friendship; and as a mark of affection, of respect, of condescension, is much more usual than among ourselves. Ordinary acquaintances touch each other's hand, and then kiss their own, and apply it to their forehead, lips, and breast. Inferiors kiss the back of the hand, or, if above the position of a servant, the palm. Slaves kiss the foot, and so do suppliants deprecating anger, or begging pardon. Kissing the hem of the garment expresses great reverence, and holy men or dervishes are especially so saluted. In the Greek Church, during grand ceremonials, the edge of the robe of the officiating priest is often kissed by the worshippers. I have seen Russian officers in Moscow kneel down in the mud of the street and kiss the hem of the robe of the priest who was conducting a holy picture in a procession. But the kiss on either cheek is the sign of close intimacy and warm affection among equals. It is the mark, not of gratitude nor of homage, but of unselfish love and esteem. Hence the betrayal by Judas with a kiss intensified the black act of treachery. It is only paralleled by the treacherous assassination of Amasa by Joab, taking him by the beard as if to kiss his cheek, while holding the sword with which he basely stabs him. I remember a sheikh of the Adwân tribe assassinating a rival in a similar manner, professing reconciliation and holding his beard with his left hand to kiss him, while he suddenly stabbed him over the shoulder with a dagger in his right hand.1 [Note: H. B. Tristram, Eastern Customs in Bible Lands, 204.]
Hail! Master mine! so did the viper hiss,
When, with false fang and stealthy crawl, he came
And scorched Messiah's cheek with that vile kiss
He deemed would sojourn there-a brand of shame.
Ah, no! not long! for soon, and face to face
With His world-shouldering Cross Lord Jesu stood.
All hail! He said; and, with a proud embrace,
Fasten'd the traitor's kiss to that forgiving wood!2 [Note: Robert Stephen Hawker.]
7. Satan must once more enter the heart of Judas at that Supper before he can finally do the deed. But, even so, we believe it was only temporarily, not for always-for he was still a human being, such as on this side eternity we all are-and he had still a conscience working in him. With this element he had not reckoned in his bargain in the high priest's palace. On the morrow of His condemnation it would exact a terrible account. That night in Gethsemane never more passed from his soul. In the thickening and encircling gloom all around he must have ever seen only the torchlight glare as it fell on the pallid Face of the Divine Sufferer. In the terrible stillness before the storm he must have ever heard only these words: “Betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss?” He did not hate Jesus then-he hated nothing; he hated everything. He was utterly desolate as the storm of despair swept over his disenchanted soul and swept him before it. No one in heaven or on earth to appeal to; no one, angel or man, to stand by him. Not the priests, who had paid him the price of blood, would have aught of him, not even the thirty pieces of silver, the blood-money of his Master and of his own soul-even as the modern Synagogue, which approves of what has been done, but not of the deed, will have none of him! With their “See thou to it!” they sent him reeling back into his darkness. Not so could conscience be stilled. And, louder than the ring of the thirty silver pieces as they fell on the marble pavement of the Temple, rang it ever in his soul: “I have betrayed innocent blood!”
An ancient writer, impressed by the bitterness of Judas's grief and the sincerity of his confession, “I have sinned in that I have betrayed innocent blood,” would interpret his suicide favourably. In the agony of his condition he could not bear to wait; his Master was doomed, and he would anticipate Him; he would rush at once into the world of the unseen, seek His presence there, and confess the heinousness of his guilt, and throw himself on His infinite compassion-“with his bare soul.” It is a striking thought. “With his bare soul”-stripped of those hands which sealed the fatal compact by their grasp, of those eyes which gloated over the accursed gain, of those lips which gave the final, fatal, treacherous kiss. And yet this, we feel, is not the Judas of the Evangelists, the Son of Perdition. “With his bare soul.” It had been bare enough throughout in the sight of God, with all its dark windings, all its treacherous subterfuges-bare with that blackened guilt, which a long life of penitence were too little to wipe out, and which a suicidal death could only fix there the more indelibly.
I know not what I am-I saw Him there!
I saw Him cross the brook,
With feet that shook,
And enter by the little garden-stair.
Am I of those who watch Him to betray?
That little garden-path,
That way He hath-
I know the very turn where He will pray.
Judas I know … But who are these I mark,
Who come with torches' flare?
I weep and stare …
Jesus is very safe, deep in the dark.
He broke forth from the flowers,
To front these hellish powers;
A Rose of Sharon He,
Uplifted from the tree.
Oh, fair of Spirit He!
As Venus from the Sea,
So soft, so borne along,
He drew to that mad throng.
He questioned them; He thought
He was the One they sought-
He is the only One …
They have bound Him, He is gone!
Oh, Who is this they have crucified?
They have not yet raised Him above:
They are drawn in a group aside,
His garments to divide:
On the ground He lieth, crucified-
Through the Heavens there beateth one wild Dove.1 [Note: Michael Field, Mystic Trees, 25.]
8. A certain mystery broods over Judas's obscure and lonely death, through which we dimly discern an unsteady attempt at suicide, a treacherous knot or a cord that breaks, a heavy fall into the hollow whence the potters had long since dug out the clay, and last of all a hideous mass, the strange antithesis of that undesecrated Body which even then perhaps was being reverently said in a new tomb, and which saw no corruption.
“He went to his own place”-this is St. Peter's simple phrase. The veil is drawn over his fate. We dare not, cannot, lift it. There let us leave him; there to the mercy of the Righteous Judge, and the justice of a merciful God; there “with his bare soul,” in the presence of the Christ whom he betrayed and crucified. It is not ours to judge. Only his history remains; not as a discouragement, for that it cannot be, but as a warning to us, how the greatest spiritual privileges may be neutralized by the indulgence of one illicit passion, and the life which is lived in the face of the unclouded sun may set at last in the night of despair.
Deeper-farther out into the night! to its farthest bounds-where rises and falls the dark flood of death. The wild howl of the storm has lashed the dark waters into fury: they toss and break in wild billows at his feet. One narrow rift in the cloud-curtain overhead, and in the pale, deathlike light lies the Figure of the Christ, so calm and placid, untouched and unharmed, on the storm-tossed waters, as it had been that night lying on the Lake of Galilee, when Judas had seen Him come to them over the surging billows, and then bid them be at peace. Peace! What peace to him now-in earth or heaven? It was the same Christ, but thorn-crowned, with nail-prints in His Hands and Feet. And this Judas had done to the Master! Only for one moment did it seem to lie there; then it was sucked up by the dark waters beneath. And again the cloud-curtain is drawn, only more closely; the darkness is thicker, and the storm wilder than before. Out into that darkness, with one wild plunge-there, where the Figure of the Dead Christ had lain on the waters! And the dark waters have closed around him in eternal silence.