Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - Matthew 27:5 - 27:5
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Mat_27:5 Ἐν τῷ ναῷ ] is to be taken neither in the sense of near the temple (Kypke), nor as referring to the room, Gasith, in which the Sanhedrim held its sittings (Grotius), nor as equivalent to ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ (Fritzsche, Olshausen, Bleek); but, in accordance with the regular use of ναός (see on Mat_4:5) and the only possible meaning of ἐν , we must interpret thus: he flung down the money in the temple proper, i.e. in the holy place where the priests were to be found. Judas in his despair had ventured within that place which none but priests were permitted to enter.
ἀπήγξατο ] he strangled himself. Hom. Od. xix. 230; Herod. vii. 232; Xen. Cyrop. iii. 1. 14; Hier. vii. 13; Aesch. Suppl. 400; Ael. V. H. v. 3. There is no reason why the statement in Act_1:18 should compel us to take ἀπάγχομαι as denoting, in a figurative sense, an awakening of the conscience (Grotius, Perizonius, Hammond, Heinsius), for although ἄγχειν is sometimes so used by classical authors (Dem. 406, 5; and see the expositors, ad Thom. Mag. p. 8), such a meaning would be inadmissible here, where we have no qualifying term, and where the style is that of a plain historical narrative (comp. 2Sa_17:23; Tob_3:10). With a view to reconcile what is here said with Act_1:18, it is usual to assume that the traitor first hanged himself, and then fell down headlong, Matthew being supposed to furnish the first, and Luke the second half of the statement (Kuinoel, Fritzsche, Olshausen, Kaeuffer, Paulus, Ebrard, Baumgarten
Crusius). But such a way of parcelling out this statement, besides being arbitrary in itself, is quite inadmissible, all the more so that it is by no means clear from Act_1:18 that suicide had been committed. Now as suicide was regarded by the Jews with the utmost abhorrence, it would for that very reason have occupied a prominent place in the narrative instead of being passed over in silence. It has been attempted to account for the absence of any express mention of suicide, by supposing that the historian assumed his readers to be familiar with the fact. But if one thing forbids such an explanation more than another, it is the highly rhetorical character of the passage in the Acts just referred to, which, rhetorical though it be, records, for example, the circumstance of the purchase of the field with all the historical fidelity of Matthew himself, the only difference being that Luke’s mode of representing the matter is almost poetical in its character (in opposition to Strauss, Zeller, de Wette, Ewald, Bleek, Pressensé, Paret, Keim, all of whom concur with Paulus in assuming, in opposition to Matthew, that Judas bought the field himself). Comp. on Act_1:18. In Mat_27:5 and Act_1:18, we have two different accounts of the fate of the betrayer, from which nothing further is to be gathered by way of historical fact than that he came to a violent end. In the course of subsequent tradition, however, this violent death came to be represented sometimes as suicide by means of hanging (Matthew, Ignatius, ad Philipp. interpol. 4), at a later stage again as a fall resulting in the bursting of the bowels, or at a later period still as the consequence of his having been crushed by a carriage when the body was in a fearfully swollen condition (Papias as quoted by Oecumenius, ad Act. l.c., and by Apollinaris in Routh’s reliquiae sacr. p. 9, 23 ff.; also in Cramer’s Catena, p. 231; Overbeck in Hilgenfeld’s Zeitschr. 1867, p. 39 ff.; Anger, Synops. p. 233). There is no other way of accounting for so many diverse traditions regarding this matter, but by supposing that nothing was known as to how the death actually took place. Be this as it may, we cannot entertain the view that Judas sunk into obscurity, and so disappeared from history, but that meanwhile the Christian legends regarding him were elaborated out of certain predictions and typical characters (Strauss, Keim, Scholten) found in Scripture (in such passages as Psa_109:8; Psa_69:25); such a view being inadmissible, because it takes no account of what is common to all the New Testament accounts, the fact, namely, that Judas died a violent death, and that very soon after the betrayal; and further, because the supposed predictions (Psalms 69, 109, 20) and typical characters (such as Ahithophel, 2Sa_15:30 ff; 2Sa_17:23; Antiochus, 2Ma_9:5 ff.) did not help to create such stories regarding the traitor’s death, but it would be nearer the truth to say that they were subsequently taken advantage of by critics to account for the stories after they had originated.