Biblion Bible Commentary
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The End of Judas
Matthew 27:1-10
1 Now when morning had come, all the chief priests and the elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death. · WEB
He brings the money back and says the true thing about it — and the men who paid it have no use for him.
They bound him, led him away, and delivered him up to Pontius Pilate, the governor Matthew 27:2.
The council can condemn and cannot execute, so the prisoner is handed to Rome at first light. The passion is told in the earlier account Mark 15:1–20; what Matthew inserts here is the end of Judas, and no other Gospel gives it.
Then Judas, who betrayed him, when he saw that Jesus was condemned, felt remorse, and brought back the thirty pieces of silver Matthew 27:3.
The trigger is the condemnation. Whatever he had expected, this was not it — which has led readers to guess at his motives, and the account declines to. What it records is a man who wanted the money enough to ask for it and did not want it once he saw what it bought.
"I have sinned in that I betrayed innocent blood" Matthew 27:4. It is a true confession, spoken to the wrong party. Everything in it is accurate: the act, the name for it, and the innocence of the man handed over. Said to anyone else it would be the beginning of something.
"What is that to us? You see to it." The chief priests' reply is the coldest line in the book. They bought him and now decline delivery, and the same words are about to come out of Pilate's mouth in a different form.
He threw down the pieces of silver in the sanctuary and departed. Then he went away and hanged himself Matthew 27:5. The word for remorse is not the word used for repentance elsewhere; it is regret, and regret with nowhere to go. Peter is weeping bitterly in the same hours, and the difference between the two men is not the size of the failure but where each of them took it.
"It's not lawful to put them into the treasury, since it is the price of blood" Matthew 27:6. The scruple is the most damning detail in the chapter. Men who have just bought a judicial murder consult the regulations about what may go in the offering box, and the money they paid out is too unclean to take back. They know exactly what it is and are careful only about the accounting.
They took counsel, and bought the potter's field with them to bury strangers in Matthew 27:7. Blood money buys a graveyard for foreigners, which is its own quiet comment. And Matthew reads the whole transaction against the prophets Matthew 27:9–10 Zechariah 11:12–13 — thirty pieces, the price set on the shepherd, thrown down in the house of the Lord and going to the potter.
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