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SUBJECT: 13. Chapter 13: Christ’s Blood Accepting a Memorial in Jerusalem
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C H A P T E R T H I R T E E N
Christ’s Blood Accepting a Memorial in Jerusalem
And the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood. And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter s field, to bury strangers in. Wherefore that field was called, The field of blood, unto this day. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him that was valued, whom they of the children of Israel did value; And gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord appointed me.
—Mat_27:6-10.
THE history of Abraham’s rights of inheritance begins and ends at a graveyard.
It begins at a grave. Abraham for a considerable sum of money bought a garden which might be used to bury Sarah’s body and which his family even in their death might regard as a place of their own. This was the first struggle in which Abraham, who was a stranger among the heathen, engaged, in order to command a piece of the promised land. Thus he possessed in his death that which he did not actually own in his lifetime.
Now the seed of Abraham has almost reached its end. This is a significant moment. When Abraham bought his field, he was still roaming about, but he was on his way to the inheritance which had been assured him, to the promised Canaan. Now, many centuries later, the seed of Abraham still peacefully occupies that promised land. Abraham is still living in the ancient Canaan, but he is about to begin his roaming about again over the whole earth.
A few more minutes will speed away, and the fleshly seed of Abraham will have lost its right to a place in the world. Only a few more moments, and he will have become unfaithful to the divine calling by means of which God’s sovereign will gave him a graveyard first, and a fertile country then. The Jews will have become unfaithful, yes, because they refuse an honorable grave to Abraham’s great Son. Because of that they will have forfeited their right to their beautiful country. A few more moments, and the seed of Abraham will begin its sad, age-long vagabondage: the nomadic life of the wandering Jew.
Now that seed of Abraham has reached another crisis, and now the history of his inheritance again culminates in a graveyard. This takes place when Judas throws the thirty pieces of silver back into the temple. The priests are compelled to say of the very wages which they themselves have weighed out: “This is a scandal to the holy place; this money lies where it does not belong” And then they take those coins which deserve no place in the temple and use them to buy a graveyard for strangers. This is the moment of the purchase of Akeldama. In this moment Israel’s rights to its inheritance are forfeited.
We must recall, for a moment the events which lead to this purchase. When Judas noticed that nothing could be done for Jesus or himself any more, he rushed into the temple and threw the money he had earned by treachery at the feet of the priests. Judas wanted to be rid of those coins. Hence he upsets the tables of the money-changers, even the tables standing outside of the temple wall. Life has nothing to offer Judas now and the wages which enabled him to live for four months[1] at the expense of the Sanhedrin, and thus gave him an opportunity, if he wished it, to look around for a more suitable vocation[2] than that which had been his during these years with Jesus, mean nothing to him. He has no use for this money now, because he sees nothing in life worth living for.
[1] Christ in His Suffering, p. 70. [Chapter 5, Christ Evaluated]
[2] This gives us a glimpse at Judas’ soul, which we must be honest enough to take: perhaps he had warned to use the thirty pieces for his current expenses while he calmly looked about for another position.
Thereupon Judas went his own way. We shall say nothing further about that. We give our attention to the priests, to the scribes and to the Sanhedrin. They were embarrassed to know what to do with their own money. They felt that it was tainted money. It was tainted with the blood of Jesus. Intuitively they sensed that this money was not clean. It was not consecrated money, for it had been used to traffic in blood. Accordingly, they do not dare to add these coins to those in the temple. The temple is a hallowed place, and this money has served in war.
Could one wish to use money, tainted with human blood, to cover the expenses incurred in the temple-service? Could the guardians of the temple permit the tables of money-changers to stand right-side-up within the sanctuary? By no means. The Nazarene had merely imagined that they had made a house of merchandise of the house of God. Even David, whose hands were tainted with the blood of other men, was, because of that blood, not allowed to build a temple. Hence they do not want the blood which clings to these coins to be in their presence. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Sabaoth. He who dwells with His Levites, who lives with His clean priests in a clean temple.
So much is certain, then: this money must be kept outside of the house of God. Not that a separate commandment dictates it in so many words. But various commentators point to such places as Num_35:33-34 where reference is made to blood which defiles the sanctuary, irrespective of how it has been shed. And they allude also to Deu_23:18 where we are told that the hire of a harlot or the wages of a dog may not be brought into the house of the Lord for any vow. In short, say these priests, all that has been earned by foul means may never be dedicated to the perfect temple service. Hence this blood money also must be kept out of the sanctuary.
But what can be done with it? Can it be equally divided among those present? No, it might be harmful, and, besides, it originally came from the treasury of the temple. Hence it would be better to assign it to some public use, to some good cause.
As yes — the solution finally comes. After careful deliberation they decide — at exactly what time we do not know — that they will use these pieces for buying a plot of ground which can be used as a cemetery for strangers.
From this decision we get a glimpse of the worth of the wages which had been paid Judas. The amount was enough to support the traitor for so many weeks, and was enough to pay for a piece of ground, large enough for a graveyard.
However that may be, it is remarkable that prophecy again insists upon being most strikingly fulfilled among the people of revelation. These Jewish leaders when they proceed to buy the field naturally take great pains in the selection and purchase. But it is also true that God has directed everything pertaining to this crooked business according to his most special providence. We read that they bought a field which had belonged to a potter. This means that the piece of ground had very likely been used by a well-known member[1] of the potter’s guild for carrying on his business. The field very likely lay on the southeast slope of the so-called valley of Hinnom, a place which prophecy had pointed out as a striking symbol of hell, that great house of the dead. The purchase of this particular piece of ground was, as we have mentioned before,[2] a fulfillment of prophecy. We observed then that the prophet Zechariah had once predicted that the thirty pieces of silver, with which Israel had sent the Good Shepherd to His death, had to be thrown at the feet of the potter, and we indicated also that the thirty pieces were an unjust price in the eyes of God. Being a foul and filthy price, it had to be brought to a foul and filthy place.
[1] A. Nede, Die Leidensgeschichte unsers Herrn Jesu Christi nach den vier Evangelien, II, p. 15.
[2] Christ in His Suffering, p. 76. [Chapter 5, Christ Evaluated]
Now it may be true that the text at the head of our chapter does not quote Zechariah himself, but refers to the quotation from Jeremiah. Irrespective of what we may think of that, we can at least be sure that the Evangelist was thinking of Zechariah’s words.[3] Hence this is more than a “striking detail” and more than an allegory (which, because it is subjective, must at bottom always be a profanation). God intentionally governed events in such a way that prophecy was even literally fulfilled according to demonstrable, officially registered data. There is a potter here; he is here literally. Filth and impurities are here, and are literally here; for what could be more foul than a cemetery, especially acemetery for “strangers”? And God’s holy mockery is here. The prophecy of Zechariah had already mocked the price at which God’s faithful shepherds were “evaluated” by calling the sum a “goodly price.” That same irony is active now.
[3] Many different attitudes are taken towards this problem. The marginal notations of the “Statenbijbel” have suggested that the solution could be reached by means of textual criticism. Others believe that Matthew was in several places thinking of Jeremiah, but that he found the summary of all these references in Zechariah. Compare Grosheide, Kommentaar Mattheus, p. 339, and Groenen, op. cit. pp. 306-308; and the standard commentaries.
This establishes beyond a doubt that Israel does not know what to do with its own blood-money. The treasury of the temple was used in order to take the great Builder of the temple captive. But, for the rest, this people which is treading upon its Shepherd does not know what to do with the thirty pieces. It bandies its own stipend to and fro between its spiritual leaders, until finally the coins come to rest between unwhitened graves (Mat_23:27).
Yes, the money which Judas returned to the temple is used to buy a cemetery, a cemetery designed for strangers. Now we may not “spiritualize” these things. Unfortunately this has been done more than once.
“In reference to Mat_13:13, where Jesus by way of explaining a parable says, ‘The field is the world,’ commentators, after the fashion of certain church fathers, point to what the blood of Christ has achieved for the world. For the price of His blood, they explain, the field of this world was purchased as a place of rest for us who are strangers on the earth.”[1] Hilarius takes the fact that this field was designed for strangers to mean that the price of Jesus’ blood would not benefit the Jews but the heathen, to the extent, of course, that they learned to believe in Christ. And Chrysostom and Augustine also thought that the field of the potter represented the church.[2]
[1] Groenen, op. cit., pp. 304-305.
[2] Ibid, 304-305.
Those who would “spiritualize” the material in this way miss the core of the significance of the whole event. Akeldama is not a divine prophecy about the church of the New Testament which never speaks of the heathen at the expense of the Jews, but lets them both together grow up out of the truths of Abraham. It is not a prophecy of God about the church but a protest on the part of the Jews against the church of the New Testament.
Even in Akeldama — for that is what the place is called later (because it had been bought for the price of blood) — even in Akeldama we can see a protest against the Spirit of Pentecost.
For the Spirit of Pentecost will come after a while in order to bring the heathen and the Jews together by means of Christ’s death, and in order to break down “the middle wall of partition.” But the Jews strongly reinforced that middle wall of partition. It almost seems as if they purposely wanted to disown the prophecy and the judgment which God had proclaimed when, on the Friday of Jesus’ death, He rent the veil of the temple. By means of that rent veil, we know, God is preaching that there is no holy place left in the world for the representatives of carnal Jewry. But those who turn the thirty pieces over and over, at the same time pretend to cling tenaciously to the inviolability of their age-old rights. They set apart a graveyard for strangers. In other words, they once more declare emphatically that a distinct line of demarcation separates Israel from the heathen. Here Israel’s dead are to be interred; there those of the stranger. Here a child of Abraham must be buried; there the child of the stranger. The difference between a Jew and a non-Jew is the greatest conceivable difference. The middle wall of partition, they insist, is not to be broken down in all eternity.
In fact, it may even be that their passion for insisting on distinction is carried even farther. It is quite certain that the word “stranger” does not refer to the “heathen” but to those people in general who could not be counted among the holy people and could not be regarded as citizens of the holy city in a restricted sense. Perhaps the term refers to alien Jews, those who were born outside of the country, and who frequently visited the city on feast days. Moreover, it is also possible that the term “stranger” refers to proselytes.[1] But when we think of this meaning of the term, it is even more evident than when we think of it as referring generally to the “heathen” that the passion for distinction and separation was exerting itself to the limit among these Jews. To set apart a special cemetery for strangers is to insist on the distinction between what is Israel and what, strictly taken, is not Israel, on the difference between the natives of the country, or even of the city, and those outside of it.
[1] Nebe, op. cit., p. 15; Grosheide, Kommentaar.
Therefore we say that Akeldama is a protest issued beforehand against the flourishing communion which God for the sake of Christ will presently build up on the feast of Pentecost — when God, for Christ’s sake, will wipe out all distinctions between Jew and non-Jew, native and alien, initiate and proselyte, and when He will call Jew and heathen together to repentance in Jesus Christ.
Seen under the proper light, the purchase of Akeldama appears to be the most vivid illustration of the carnal thinking on the part of Abraham’s lost sons with which we have met thus far. They array against the God who rent the veil, who moved their landmarks, and who mocked their passion for distinctiveness from on high. Akeldama was purchased with Judas’ blood-money; it represents the wrath of Rachel who weeps for her children and will not be comforted because they are not. Just as weeping Rachel will not dry her tears because she blames Jesus and will never forgive Him for doing an injustice to Abraham’s flesh, and for not accepting the nation as a special nation, just so Rachel’s dirge is sung now as the Sanhedrin proceeds to dedicate Akeldama. Hoping against hope, they insist even to the point of appealing to the cemetery that the children of the home are different from the children of strangers. They refuse to accept the teaching of the Crucified One who said that those of all nations who fear God and deal justly are acceptable to God. Akeldama is a protest against Jesus and His open-hearted precursor who once preached this message to them: “Say not among yourselves, We are Abraham’s children. For God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.”
No, they are and will remain the children of Abraham, and the whole face of the world must, they insist, continue to be divided into nooks and corners. This part for the citizen, that for the strangers, Barbarian and Israelite must be kept separate in the world. After all, an alien scent lingers even in a death shroud. Akeldama, field of blood: newest and most obsolete of cemeteries.
We know, of course, that the Jews who hit upon the idea of setting Akeldama apart as a way of disposing of the thirty pieces did not look upon the matter in this way. Just as they were quite unconscious of the fact that the particulars given by Zechariah— the potter, the thirty pieces and the like—were being literally fulfilled in their odd transaction, so they were quite unaware that they, by keeping Judas’ blood-money out of the temple, were making themselves subject to the threat of the ancient prophecy. The consideration that money tainted with blood had no place in the temple was, naturally, an outgrowth of the Levitical character of the laws of purification but it was not in itself a proof of the fact that such money was ethically tainted. Levitical cleanness or uncleanness is not the same as ethical cleanness. Hence when the authorities in Jerusalem refuse to receive this blood-money into the temple, they by no means want to have it supposed that the shedding of blood made possible by this money was not well-pleasing to God. They mean only that the temple will not be served by such anti-pacific contributions. The temple is irenical; consequently it wishes to have nothing to do with the price of blood. The business of war is not suitable to temples.
And although these leaders appeal to David who was also kept from building a temple with “bloody hands,” they are nevertheless a long way from David. David’s hands never manipulated the stones of a temple, but David’s heart and mouth sang psalms for the temple, and the psalms were messianic in character. These curators of the temple share David’s bloody hands, but not his messianic heart. So thoroughly have the psalms of David become lost to their spirit that they oppose them diametrically. They sell the real Author of those psalms, the great Son of David, for the price of blood, and their thirty pieces of silver can find rest only on a cemetery designed for strangers. Yes, their hands are tainted with blood, but not with the blood which soiled the hands of David, for David’s had been dipped in the blood of Israel’s enemies, whereas theirs are soiled with that of David’s own Son.
The taint of this blood Akeldama cannot wipe out in all eternity. In vain do the Jews write the betrayal of their kingdom in the soil of a graveyard. Now that they betray their Kingdom, that Kingdom knows of no stranger other than themselves and their life.
But was not the fact that in Jerusalem itself the blood of Christ accepted a memorial for itself a triumph for God? A place for the blood of Jesus was reserved in the vocabulary of the Aramaic vernacular when the official language of the temple refused to put the blood of God’s sacrificial Lamb into the hymns of the temple. God established a memorial for the blood of Jesus in the language of the tiny, of the unitiated. Akeldama, Akeldama, field of blood, field of the great blood, field of the unique blood, the blood of Jesus.
Thus God prepares for His Pentecostal blessing. Though the holy Hebrew language of the temple was mute about the blood of God’s sacrificial Lamb, the vernacular, the Aramaic dialect (as is really the sense of the word) preaches the blood of Jesus aloud for all times, carries it into the market-place, and creates a memorial for it in the daily conversation of the masses: Akeldama, Akeldama.
Now this is not the defeat of revelation but its forward march. When the great and the eminent refuse, the meek and the humble may come. When the lords of the temple say that they will be silent about this blood, the vernacular carries the memory of it farther. As the natives of the house enter the temple gates they hear a voice saying: be silent about that blood; ignore it, cover it. But the strangers, who are brought to Akeldama by their family or by a few poor acquaintances, will pass under an arch which has the superscription “Jesus’ blood” written in the popular tongue.
This, if we wish it, is material for a beautiful allegory, for the nomenclature of the speech-making congregation in the case of Akeldama corresponds to the facts of the feast of Pentecost. In Akeldama, as a matter of fact, the feast of Pentecost is already coming. God has already transferred the blood of Christ, the great subject of the conversations of the whole world, from the Hebrew to the Aramaic, from the language of the temple to the vernacular of the common people, from the tongue of priests to the jargon of street-cleaners, from official academic learning to officious popular mood, from Israel’s legal bearers of glory to those who speak an alien tongue, the offspring of a mixed race. God has preserved the sound and the voice of Jesus’ unique blood, and He has crystalized it in the unwritten superscription over the graveyard of Akeldama. The blood of Jesus is remembered by the dead and the living, by Akeldama and by the Holy Supper.
Therefore Akeldama is a condemnation of carnal Jewry. We have observed before that the people of Israel by rejecting the Messiah were following the course of “the dead who buried the dead.” But this is even worse. Here the dead bury those who are called unto life. Now that Israel proceeds to crucify its own Messiah, the offer of salvation comes to the “strangers.” As God grants the privileges of Zion to these “strangers” the Jews say: we must see to it that these strangers remain very small, very humble, even in their death: Akeldama, Akeldama.
And then the voice of God pronounced a clear and ringing prophecy. The history of Israel — and now we return to our point of departure — the history of Israel and of its inheritance-rights began at a graveyard and ends at a graveyard. Remember Abraham who for a high price bought a field from the “sons of Heth.” But a great and a tragic difference separates that Abraham, who bought a small piece of ground for his dead, from the Sanhedrin.
Abraham bought a place for his own who were among “strangers” but the Sanhedrin buys a place for the strangers who are among their own. Abraham buys a grave because, although Canaan is his according to the promise, he does not actually possess it. The Sanhedrin buys a graveyard on the assumption, doubtless, that it has a right to the land of the fathers and actually possesses it. But God has declared that Israel’s right to Canaan and even to Akeldama — those few square feet in an obscure corner — are no longer the property of the people now that they crucify the Christ.
At Akeldama the great robbery begins. From this point on Jewry is dismissed; from now on the Jews will have to roam over the wide world. When Abraham bought his cemetery he bought and paid for it honestly. But when the Sanhedrin buys a field, it pays for it with the price of blood. The money which Abraham set aside for the first piece of the promised land he was to occupy had been given him by God Himself. But the money the Sanhedrin paid for a graveyard for strangers was robbed from the temple, and was used to sell God Himself in the person of His Son. When Abraham bought his grave, that which separated him, his dead Sarah and his coming generation from the strangers until the days of Christ was his faith, and God’s promise, and the messianic spirit. Today the Sanhedrin buys a field for strangers; again it emphatically draws a line of demarcation between itself and the stranger. The day of Abraham has been fulfilled but they do not see it, and do not want to see it. Hence it is not faith this time but unbelief, not the promise but a falsely interpreted law, not the spirit of Christ but the flesh which puts its seal on this deed, a deed signed in the year of Christ’s death. Abraham hoped against hope that he who for the present had to buy a parcel of ground for his dead, would sometime through blessing become the owner of the whole of that rich land. But the Sanhedrin hopes against hope that it can still escape from the judgment, the very judgment which guarantees the strangers the rights of Israel itself.
Thus we can say that Sarah, the princess, was buried among strangers by faith, hope and love. But the princely Son of the queenly Sarah, the emancipating Son of the emancipated mother is being buried today by unbelief, self-deterioration, and terrible hatred. Had Akeldama existed when Jesus died, the Jews would not even have deigned to bury this Son of Sarah there. He belonged to those who are wholly accursed, to those who must be given a place with the wicked in death. Akeldama is far too good for Him. Therefore Akeldama, which is an expression of God’s judgment against Israel’s essential death, has come to us. We are strangers. Akeldama tells us, Except you repent, you shall similarly perish. You will also belong to those who as candidates for life point out the place of interment for others beneath your rank, when, as a matter of fact, you have yourself eternally lost your rank. The price of the blood of Jesus Christ — thirty pieces — was set aside to buy Akeldama. But let us not proceed to build the graves of the prophets, for the other side of this peculiarly Pharisaical piece of work is to purchase an Akeldama. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that stonest the prophets, that buildest the grave for the prophets away out beyond Akeldama, but in the same city of Sodom and Egypt where our Lord was also crucified, Jerusalem, Jerusalem — no, we refuse to look at your graves any longer. We would look at the cross; we would follow Jesus who is on His way to Pilate, and who will give His blood in order that it may accomplish miracles of life in the dry field of the world for all those who are strangers by nature, but would be heirs by grace.
We would tremble in the presence of the judgment of Akeldama. It is not for nothing that to the right and to the left of the cities of men there are cemeteries, cemeteries for strangers. These are the Akeldamas in which Jews are buried. Those who were not Jews designated the place and said: “That corner; use that for a Jew.”
Father of Abraham, grave of Sarah, chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof! Akeldama in Jerusalem — the end of Sarah’s grave, the beginning of those wanderings of the wandering Jew. The curses of the Arab, the psalms of the pentecostal congregation, and the steady gale of the day of Pentecost have driven the outcast Jew from his unwhitened graves.
For Christ is everywhere. He walks among the graves of strangers also. His relatives are there; Sarah looks to Akeldama for her many children, before long, in the last day. She knows very well that her great Son has achieved this, her Wonder-Child whom she bore and nursed with such great difficulty.