but slight in comparison with this, their base ingratitude towards the Lord, who had taken charge of the flock himself.-The explanation we have given, sustains and completes the surmises of Grotius. The objection, that after we expect to

find a thing and not a person, does not apply; for "to the potter" is just the same as to the potter's house or potter's ground. Casting to the potter is used here in precisely the same sense as casting to the moles and bats,-viz., to their place of resort, in Is. ii. 20. Schmieder's objection that it is impossible, or rather inconceivable, that a potter should have either his house or his workshop in an unclean spot, only shows that the passage in Jeremiah has been overlooked, where it is expressly stated that the potter's workshop was in the valley of Hinnom. The valley was theologically unclean, that is, unsuitable for the performance of acts of worship (2 Kings xxiii. 10), but in a civil point of view it was not so. So much was not conceded to theology, even in the immediate vicinity of the capital. If the valley of Hinnom was used as a burying-ground (see Krafft, Topographie Jerus. P. 190 sqq.), the potter might also settle there, if it contained the proper earth for his purpose. Now Krafft (p. 193) has shown that this kind of earth is really to be found there: "then follows the Aceldama or field of blood, as it is called in tradition, with a few graves or natural grottoes and quarries in the corner. The testimony of tradition as to the exact site is confirmed by the fact, that a little higher up there is a considerable bed of white earth or pipe-clay, where I frequently saw people employed in digging.”—The most widely-adopted of the interpretations which differ from our own, is "to the treasure," or "to the treasurer," and appeal is made to the authority of the Syriac, where the word is translated treasury. Of the advocates of this exposition, some maintain, with Kimchi, that is synonymous with is; others, with Jonathan, that means treasurer; and others again, for example Jahn and Hitzig, suggest the reading ", which they regard as synonymous with But this explanation could hardly have been defended by any one, who was acquainted with the passages already quoted from Jeremiah. For no one could place these passages side by side with the verse before us, without surmising at once that

.אוֹצָר

there was a connection between them, though he might not be able to determine its precise nature, especially if he observed, how nearly every verse in the chapter is related in some way to Jeremiah, and that there are traces in other parts of the chapter, of the use which has been made of Jer. xviii. and xix. (compare ver. 9 with Jer. xviii. 21 and xix. 9). It does not even give a good sense, or rather it gives no sense at all. For how could the temple-treasures be introduced in this connection? It would have done honour to the thirty pieces of silver to place them among these. Dishonourable gains were not allowed to be brought into the treasury of the temple (Deut. xxiii. 18, Matt. xxvii. 6). Moreover the root is never used interchangeably with . There are more than forty other passages, in which this word Jozer occurs, and it always means an imagemaker or potter. It is used with peculiar frequency in this sense in Jer. xviii. and xix., and also in Zechariah xii. 1.—Again the expression throw it does not harmonise with this rendering. It evidently denotes a contemptuous action, and there would have been nothing contemptuous in depositing the money in the treasury of the temple. What is thrown away in disgust cannot be placed among the temple-treasures. Maurer's rendering, “mittitur in templum pecunia,” is simply a proof of inability to explain the words as they stand in the text. In this case it would have been better to leave the explanation in the hands of the Jews! In Hofmann's opinion the meaning of the passage is, "he regards the money as worth no more than the clay that is used by the potter." In this case the potter would be equivalent to a potter. But Jeremiah, on the one hand, and Matthew on the other, both point to one potter in particular. And what a singular mode of expression it would be, if " to the potter" meant "to the clay."-The glory of the price, which I have been valued at by them: in other words, "the glorious price (ironically egregium scilicet pretium) at which they have estimated my person and my work." (Compare Deut. xxxii. 6, " do ye thus requite the Lord, O foolish people and unwise”).—And I threw it, the amount (or it, the price), into the house of the Lord, that it might be carried thence to the potter. There can be no doubt in this case, that possibly be taken to the temple and the potter at the same time. For the potter did not work in the

the money could not

temple, nor even in the city, but, as we have already seen, in the valley of Hinnom. From the very nature of the case, there cannot have been any potter in the house of the Lord. We must suppose, therefore, that it was taken first of all to the temple and then to the potter; and this is very clearly indicated by the use of before "away to the potter," in other words,

to be carried thence to the potter." But the question arises here, why was the money taken first of all to the temple, when it was ultimately to be left on the potter's ground? Evidently, because the temple was the place, where the people appeared before the Lord. There, therefore, the nation was to be upbraided with its shameful ingratitude, by the return of the contemptible wages. The money was then to be carried away to the potter, because dishonourable money could not remain in the temple, Deut. xxiii. 19. Talm. tract. Sanhedrin f. 112.

We have hitherto been seeking to solve the difficulties connected with vers. 13 and 14, altogether apart from the fulfilment. And the following is the explanation obtained. The Lord has once more undertaken the office of shepherd over the flock, which is devoted to the slaughter, the unhappy nation of Israel; and when he lays the office down again, on account of its determined unbelief, he demands his wages. They give him thirty pieces of silver. He is not content with such miserable pay, and throws it down in the temple. It is carried thence, as being unclean, and taken to the potter's ground, where it is left as a pledge of divine vengeance, until the day, when judgment falls upon the nation. The meaning of this symbolical representation we found to be, that after the Lord had given up his people on account of their hardness of heart, their obduracy would be displayed once more in some striking act of ingratitude towards him, and by this they would render themselves completely ripe for judgment.

The agreement between the prophecy and its fulfilment is so striking in this instance, that it would force itself at once upon. us, even if no reference had been made to it in the New Testament itself. What else could the last and most fearful manifestation of ingratitude towards the good shepherd, predicted

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 connection 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 n autos (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 connection 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 connection 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 his 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