<p>26:15&nbsp;<i>And said: What are you willing to give me</i>- The financial aspect was important to Judas. He, like so many after him, was prepared to betray the Son of God purely for money. The decision of Judas to make this offer is recorded as coming straight after the record of the woman anointing the Lord's feet with the expensive ointment. Judas's heart cried out as he saw all that money wasted; he knew that the perfume could have been sold for much and the money entrusted to him as the treasurer, and therefore he would have had the opportunity to take some for himself. As I read the records, the motivation of Judas was&nbsp;<i>fundamentally</i> financial, whatever we may like to speculate about his other reasons. It's almost too farfetched to believe; that a man who walked in the company of the Son of God, who entered into deep spiritual conversation with him, who is even described by the Spirit of Christ as &quot;a man mine equal, my guide and mine acquaintance&quot; (Ps. 55:13,4), could steal the odd few dollars (in our terms) out of the bag of those 12 travelling men. It couldn't have been any great sum that he notched up in those three years. And yet this led Judas to betray the Lord of all grace, for a sum no more than at most a few thousand US dollars (in our terms). They valued the Son of God at 30 pieces of silver (Mt. 27:9)- and&nbsp;<i>all it could buy was a field</i>. And Judas was happy with that. The way he later hurled those coins down and stalked off to hang himself suggests that he saw the essence of his failure as being tied up with that money. &quot;The reward of iniquity&quot; was what Peter contemptuously called it (Acts 1:18).</p><p><i>If I will deliver Him to you?</i>- The Lord had predicted this, using the very same words, concerning how He would be delivered over to the &quot;chief priests&quot; (20:18). The Lord had only just used the word translated &quot;deliver&quot; in predicting His betrayal (:2). And Judas did it. The Lord surely knew the power of self-fulfilling prophecies; to some degree He psychologically set up this situation so that this would indeed happen. For ultimately the Lord 'gave Himself', He handed Himself over the same Greek word for us (Gal. 2:20; Eph. 5:2,25; 1 Pet. 2:23). It is not at all unbelievable that Judas would do the very thing which the Lord had predicted the betrayer would do. It is true to human experience; people do the very thing they know they should not, performing to the letter the very situations which they have been clearly warned about. Yet through all this, it must be remembered that the same word for deliver up / betray is used about how&nbsp;<i>God</i>&nbsp;'delivered up' His Son for us all (Rom. 8:32). Although Judas was without question guilty and did what he did of his own volition, God's hand was somehow in it, working through the freewill of men. And this is the great comfort to all those who suffer evil at the hands of evil men; the evil of the men and their actions doesn't mean that we have been forsaken by God, nor that His far higher hand is not in it all, working as He does for our ultimate good in the latter end.&nbsp;</p><p>We noted earlier that the very language of betrayal into the hands of the religious leaders and thence to the power of the Gentiles (20:18,19) was used about the experience of the faithful in the final tribulation (24:9,10). In the very last few days, the last generation will pass through the sufferings of the Lord Jesus, identifying with His death so that they might live with Him. This will be especially appropriate if the last generation are the only human beings to never taste of death. And even for those believers who do not live at that time, they too find that their experiences of betrayal are a part in their fellowship of their Lord's sufferings. For the same word is used in speaking of how we are all &quot;delivered unto death for Jesus' sake&quot; (2 Cor. 4:11). For the sake of being in Him, identified with Him, we must all share in His sufferings and betrayal experience.</p><p><i>They paid him</i>- They weighed Gk. the money, fulfilling Zech. 11:12 &quot;They weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver&quot;. The legalism of all concerned shines through. According to Mark 14:11, this was really an advance payment. The money was perhaps weighed out because the shekels were the temple shekels, those used in the temple.&nbsp;</p><p><i>Thirty pieces</i>- The legal price of a slave (Ex. 21:32). The money intended for purchasing the temple sacrifices (see on&nbsp;<i>They covenanted</i>) was used to buy the Lord at the time when He appeared supremely &quot;in the form of a servant&quot;.</p><p><i>Of silver</i>- They were &quot;the price of Christ's blood&quot; (27:6), &quot;the price of Christ&quot;. We are surely intended to use this identification to interpret the parable of the pieces of silver s.w. given to the Lord's servants (25:18,27). He calls it &quot;My money&quot; s.w. &quot;silver pieces&quot;, Lk. 19:23. The money of Christ was the money paid to get His blood. Perhaps those to whom more silver pieces were given are those who had sinned the more, whose redemption was the more costly; or those who appreciate the price of their redemption the more.</p>