Biblion Bible Commentary
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Thirty Pieces of Silver
Matthew 26:14-16
14 Then one of the twelve, who was called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests · WEB
Three verses, a price asked for rather than offered — and the figure is one the law had already set.
Then one of the twelve, who was called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, "What are you willing to give me if I deliver him to you?" Matthew 26:14–15.
The phrase one of the twelve is left in every time he is named, and it is the horror of the sentence. This is not an outsider who got close. He was chosen, sent out with authority, given power to heal, and present for every word of the five discourses.
Matthew places the approach directly after the anointing, and the earlier account does the same Mark 14:1–21. Whatever else moved him, something in that room did.
The initiative is his. Nobody recruits him, and the offer is not made to him — he goes and asks a price, which puts the transaction on his side of the table.
So they weighed out for him thirty pieces of silver Matthew 26:15. Matthew alone gives the figure, because he knows where it comes from. Thirty pieces of silver is the compensation the law sets for a slave gored by an ox Exodus 21:32 — not a fortune, and not nothing. It is the statutory value of a life that belonged to somebody else.
It is also the wage the prophet was told to throw to the potter, the price at which the shepherd was valued by the flock he tended Zechariah 11:12–13, and Matthew will return to that passage when the money comes back Matthew 27:9–10.
From that time he sought opportunity to betray him Matthew 26:16. The betrayal is not a moment of madness. It is a search, conducted patiently over several days, by a man who went on eating at the same table.
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