Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

here, possibly be, but the murderous attack by which the Jews rewarded the fidelity of Christ as a shepherd, and for the execution of which Judas was bribed? It is not merely in the event regarded as a whole, however, but even in the details there is the closest connexion between the history and the prophecy. The miserable payment of thirty pieces of silver is introduced here primarily, as a figurative representation of the blackest ingratitude, and the most supreme contempt on the part of the Jews. Yet one cannot but be struck with the fact, that of all the small sums possible, the very one, which Judas the traitor actually received, should have been singled out. Nor can this have been altogether accidental. Whilst the bribery of Judas the traitor was in itself a proof of the basest ingratitude, the fact that, when Judas left it to the priests to fix the terms (Matt. xxvi. 15), they only gave him the contemptible sum of thirty pieces of silver, was a manifestation of the greatest contempt towards the Lord himself. There is no force in the objection brought by Paulus (Comm. iii. p. 683), that Zechariah represents the thirty pieces of silver as paid to the shepherd, not to his betrayer. The insignificant remuneration paid to the betrayer was really an expression of contempt towards the shepherd. And thus also it came to pass, under the superintending providence of God, whose secret influence extends even to the ungodly, that Judas threw the money into the temple, so that what Zechariah had witnessed inwardly took place here outwardly, the people were upbraided with their ingratitude by a symbolical action, in the place where they were accustomed to appear before the Lord. The priests carried the money away from the temple, as being impure, and bought a wretched piece of ground in the very same valley, which had once before been defiled by innocent blood and had called down the vengeance of God upon Jerusalem, as predicted by Jeremiah, and on the very same spot where Jeremiah had formerly proclaimed to the people their rejection by the Lord. Here, then, was the blood-money deposited, the Tμn apatos (Matt. xxvii. 6), the reward for betraying innocent blood (ver. 4), from which the field received the name of "field of blood" (ver. 8; Acts i. 19), and here did it lie as a witness against Israel, a pledge by which the nation had bound itself to submit to the punishment of God; and inasmuch as it resembled

the former one, which they had already been obliged to redeem, the threat uttered by Jeremiah, in connexion with these earlier abominations, had now recovered its full force again. Compare Jer. xix. 4 sqq., "they have filled this place with the blood of innocents, therefore, behold the days come, saith the Lord, that this place shall no more be called Tophet, nor the valley of Hinnom, but the valley of slaughter." There are words to the same effect in chap. vii. 32. Tradition also places the field of blood in the valley of Hinnom, in perfect accordance with the results, which we have obtained from a comparison of the accounts in the New Testament with the words of Jeremiah and Zechariah (see Lightfoot in acta ap. opp. ii., p. 690, and Krafft ut supra).

The results, which we have so clearly obtained from a comparison of prophecy and history, are confirmed by the express testimony of the Apostle Matthew (chap. xxvii. 9). But there are certain difficulties connected with this passage.

The first occurs in the introductory clause, in which the prophecy is attributed to Jeremiah (" then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying").

Many of the earlier commentators (Sanctius, Glass, Frischmuth) conjectured, that the passage as given by Matthew was compounded from the two prophets Jeremiah and Zechariah, and that the name of the former alone was mentioned, as the more distinguished of the two. But to this it was very properly objected, that the passages of Jeremiah, to which they referred, ought certainly to have some connexion with the event narrated by Matthew. To this objection they were unable to reply, partly because they did not perceive in what relation the prophecy of Zechariah stood to the passages cited from Jeremiah, and partly also because they did not observe the profound meaning which Matthew detects in the fact, that the potter's field was purchased as the field of blood. Grotius is the only one of all the commentators who has in the slightest degree hinted at this. "When Matthew," he says, "quotes this saying of Jeremiah, which is repeated by Zechariah, he tacitly declares that the Jews are threatened with the same judgments, as these prophets had foretold to the men of their own times." But the objection is fully answered by the remarks we have already made. We

have shown that the prophecy of Zechariah is for the most part simply a renewal of that of Jeremiah, that he announces a second fulfilment, which will not merely be accidentally associated with the first announcement, but essentially connected with it, inasmuch as it rests upon the fundamental idea of the justice of God, which is sure to bring about a fresh fulfilment whenever it receives a fresh provocation.

Matthew might certainly have quoted both prophets. But such lengthened quotations are contrary to the custom of the writers in the New Testament. For this a twofold reason may be assigned. They could justly presuppose a very accurate acquaintance with the Scriptures on the part of their readers; and they placed the human instrumentality employed, far behind the Divine author, the spirit of God and of Christ, which spoke equally in all the prophets. Very frequently, therefore, in fact almost universally, the human author is not mentioned by name at all. The writer contents himself with the simple formula of quotation, "the Scripture saith," "as it is written," "for it is written," "as the Holy Spirit saith," or "as God hath said." It not infrequently happens that two or even three passages from different authors are combined together into one, and yet the name of only one author is given. The passage which presents the closest analogy to the one under consideration is Mark i. 2, 3: "As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, behold I send my messenger before thy face, who shall prepare thy way before thee. The voice of one crying," &c. In this case two predictions are quoted under the name of Isaiah, one from Malachi and the other from Isaiah himself; and more than this, the prophecy of Malachi stands first. Isaiah was the more celebrated prophet; and it had become so much a custom to refer to the minor prophets as a whole, in consequence of their having been united together in a single collection, that it is very rarely indeed that any one of them is mentioned by name. (Compare Matt. xxi. 5, with Is. Ixii. 11, and Zech. ix. 9; and Matt. xxi. 13, with Is. lvi. 7, Jer. vii. 11, Rom. ix. 27, 1 Pet. ii. 6 sqq.).

If Matthew had simply intended to call attention to the fulfilment of Zechariah's prophecy, he would have contented himself with a general formula of quotation. This is evident from the analogy of all the other quotations from Zechariah, in not one

of which the prophet is mentioned by name. Thus in John xix. 37 the words of chap. xii. 10 are introduced in this general way, "and again another Scripture saith;" in John xii. 14, where a quotation from chap. ix. 9 occurs, we merely find, "as it is written;" in Matt. xxvi. 31, where Zech. xiii. 7 is quoted, "for it is written " (compare Mark xiv. 27); and in Matt. xxi. 4, 5 a quotation from chap. ix. 9 is headed thus, "that which was spoken by the prophet," where the article shows that Matthew could take for granted that all his readers were well acquainted with the prophet referred to. But although it might appear to him unnecessary to mention Zechariah by name, this was not the case with Jeremiah. The fact that there was a fulfilment of his prophecy in the event narrated, and the extent to which this was the case, were not so immediately obvious, as to render directions for further research unnecessary. And yet, if this was overlooked, the meaning of Zechariah's prophecy would be involved in obscurity, and the most essential features of the fulfilment misunderstood.

It only remains to show, that the quotation in Matthew fully coincides with the passage before us, in substance at least, if not in words. We must, first of all, endeavour to determine the meaning of the words καὶ ἔλαβον τὰ τριάκοντα ἀργύρια, τὴν τιμὴν τοῦ τετιμημένου, ὅν ἐτιμήσαντο ἀπὸ υἱῶν Ἰσραήλ. We render them thus: "They took the price of him who was valued, at which they had valued him on the part of the children of Israel." To obtain this meaning we do not supply the Tíves before ἀπὸ τῶν ὑιῶν Ἰσραὴλ, which Fritzsche has very properly rejected, though he has not thereby established his own extremely forced interpretation. We rather apply the Hebrew and Aramean usage, according to which the third person indefinite, which again takes the place of the passive, is expressed by the third person plural. We may cite as an example from the New Testament, Luke xii. 20, τὴν ψυχήν σου ἀπαιτοῦσιν ἀπὸ σοῦ. The words ἀπὸ υἱῶν Ἰσραὴλ, " on the part of the children of Israel," answer to hy in Zechariah. (Compare James i. 13, άτò Оεоû πεipáloμai: "I am tempted on the part of God.") The name is given in Matthew in the place of the pronoun, to call attention to the shameful character of the valuation. It was not the heathen, from whom it proceeded, but the people of the

VOL. III.

D

covenant, who had received such innumerable proofs of the love and mercy of the Lord. The apparent discrepancy, arising from the fact that in Matthew it is the rulers of the Jews, who are said to take the pieces of silver, and throw them upon the potter's field, whereas Zechariah attributes this to the shepherd, is removed by Matthew himself in the words καθὰ συνέταξε μοι Kúpios, which he introduces at the end, and which answer to the

of Zechariah. He evidently intimates in these וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָה אֵלַי

words that he regards the rulers of the nation, not as acting independently, but merely as instruments through whom the Lord accomplished his purposes. Moreover, Matthew had the words of our verse in his mind, for a long time before he actually quoted them. Compare chap. xxvi. 15, "what will ye give me (answering to the words 'give me my wages' in the verse before us; the evangelist looks upon Judas as an instrument in the hands of Christ, who demands his wages, as it were, through him at the hands of the Jews), and I will deliver him unto you. And they covenanted (eσrnoav, the Septuagint rendering in this passage) with him for thirty pieces of silver."

Ver. 14. "And I broke my second staff, the united ones, to destroy the brotherhood between Judah and Israel.”

(Compare ver. 7.) There is no intimation of the staff having been originally composed of two distinct pieces of wood. Its fitness as a symbol was purely ideal, and it was only when it was broken that there was an actual resemblance between the sign and the thing signified. It is not without a reason, that the payment of the wages of thirty pieces of silver is placed between the breaking of the first and second staves. It served at the same time to justify the first judgment, and provoke the second. The meaning of the prophet is this: after the Lord has forsaken his people, the most pernicious discord will arise among them, discord as destructive in its character as the former conflicts between Judah and Israel. He expresses this in his usual figurative style (see the remarks on vers. 10, 11) in these terms, "the Lord will cause the brotherhood between Judah and Israel to cease," which is equivalent to the declaration in ver. 9, "they will eat one another's flesh." The prophecy was fulfilled, as we have already observed, in the time of the Roman war, when the

« ForrigeFortsæt »