Matthew Poole Commentary - Matthew 27:10 - 27:10

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Matthew Poole Commentary - Matthew 27:10 - 27:10


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Ver. 7-10. They at last resolve what to do with the money, which was no great sum, for, as we noted before, it exceeded not three pounds fifteen shillings. They would not turn it to their own private use, for (probably) it was before taken out of the treasury; neither would they again return it into the treasury, because it had been made use of as the hire of blood. They therefore agree to buy with it a piece of ground ordinarily known by the name, of



the potter’s field, probably because some potter had digged earth, and thrown the waste of his pot kilns there, so as it was of no great value. This field the vulgar, upon this purchase of it by the priests, called many years after, The field of blood. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet. The evangelists use this term fulfilled, as I have before noted, in very different senses.



1. Sometimes to express the accomplishment of a prophecy.



2. Sometimes to express the fulfilling of a type, or answering it by the antitype.



3. Sometimes to express an allusion to some other scripture, mentioning some matter of fact of a like nature.



For the text here quoted, we have no such text in the writings of the prophet Jeremiah, which are upon sacred record. Jeremiah indeed did buy a field by order from God, Jer_32:9, to declare his faith in God’s promises for the return of the Jews out of captivity, but he bought it of his uncle Hanameel, and for seventeen pieces of silver; and that he was a potter, or that the field was called by that name, we do not read. The nearest place in the prophets to this text is Zec_11:12,13, And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver. And the Lord said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prized at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the Lord. It is a very hard text as it lies in the prophet to give a just account of. The prophet was one of them who prophesied after the captivity of Babylon, yet, Zec_11:6, he plainly prophesieth after God’s destruction of the Jews and of Jerusalem. Which destruction being after that of the Chaldeans, to what it should refer, but to the last destruction of the Jews by the Romans, I cannot understand. Zec_11:7, he saith, I will feed the flock of the slaughter, that is, the flock designed for the slaughter, or drawing near to the slaughter, even you, O poor of the flock. Christ came in person to feed the church of the Jews, but they also abhorred him, so that he abhorred them, and resolved to cast them quite off; Zec_11:8,9. So he broke first his staff called Beauty, took away all the glory and beauty of that church. Then, as it were in indignation, he saith, If ye think good, give me my price. What requital will you give me for my labour amongst you? So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver. Their selling of Christ to a traitor for so much, signified their high contempt of him. And the Lord said, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prized at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the Lord. The evangelist indeed doth not quote the very words of the prophet, but the substance of them. And for my part I think, that the evangelist here by fulfilling meaneth the accomplishment of the prophecy in Zechariah. For I know not what other tolerable sense to make of the prophecy, if we do not say the prophet spake in the person of Christ, foretelling his own coming amongst them, their rejection and contempt of him, and his utter rejection of them; and prophesying, as a piece of their contempt and rejection of him, their selling him to Judas for thirty pieces of silver, (a most contemptible price), and God so ordering it by his providence, that this money should again be brought them, and this potter’s field should be bought with it. So as I think that text was fulfilled here more than by allusion, or as it was typical to this act, and that this act was the very thing which there is prophesied, and here fulfilled. But how Matthew saith this was



spoken by Jeremy the prophet is a harder knot. It is observable that Zechariah hath many things found in Jeremiah, and it is not improbable that the very same thing was prophesied by Jeremiah, though afterward repeated by Zechariah, and only in the writings of Zechariah left upon sacred record. Matthew having now given us an account of the fate of Judas, returneth to our Saviour, carried (as we heard) before Pilate.