<p>27:9 <em>Then was fulfilled what was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet, saying: And they took the thirty pieces of silver</em>- The quotation is from Zechariah (Zech. 11:12). The standard explanations are that the volume of the prophets in which Zechariah was included began with Jeremiah and was therefore referred to as &quot;Jeremiah&quot;; or that in fact Jeremiah wrote Zechariah 9-11 and this was included in the prophecy now known as Zechariah. For more on this, see on :10 <em>The potter's field. </em>Given the very detailed congruence between reality and the Gospel records, it would be unlikely that such an obvious error was made. We who believe in an inspired Bible should rather, in any case, say with humility &quot;I am still searching for more light on this question&quot; rather than assume that here we have an evidence of a fallible Bible. If one part is inaccurate, what about the rest... The context of Zech. 11:12,13 is significant- note the pronouns in the Hebrew text, in that the money was cast to the potter by the same prophet who had been valued at the low price of 30 pieces of silver:&nbsp; &quot;If it seem good to you, give me my wages; but if not, let it alone: and they weighed me as wages thirty silverlings. Then Jehovah said to me, Throw it to the potter, the splendid price at which I am valued by them; and so I took the thirty silverlings, and threw it into the house of Jehovah to the potter&quot;. Throwing it to the potter was a response of sarcasm as was the reference to &quot;the splendid price&quot;, in that this was the price of a dead slave (Ex. 21:32), and far below what a prophet should have been valued at, let alone the Son of God. Just as Judas threw the coins into the temple treasury, so the Jews threw them to the potter. Judas and the Jewish leadership are thereby once again connected, they were part of the same 'satan' system which was the adversary to the Lord. Those learned Jews, steeped as they were in the text of Scripture, surely closed their minds to these words as they so clearly fulfilled them. We too can know Scripture, and yet the flesh has a way of hiving off the part of our minds that is aware of them. And according to the prophecy, it was the undervalued prophet himself who threw the coins to the potter. The action of the Jewish elders was therefore directly controlled by the risen Lord. This connection between the prophet (Jesus) and the Jews is surely reflected by the way in which the Hebrew text speaks of the prophet himself throwing the coins to the potter, whereas that is quoted here in Matthew as if they, the children of Israel, cast them to the potter. See on :10 <em>As the Lord appointed Me. </em>If they had thought upon Zechariah 11 with open minds, they would have seen in their own actions the very evidence that He was alive and working through them to their own condemnation. And the context of Zech. 11:12,13 is God's breaking of His covenant with Israel because of their undervaluing of His prophet. This is precisely what happened in that the new covenant was confirmed to the extent that the old covenant was abrogated.</p><p><em>The price of him on whom a price had been set</em>- The implication is that the Lord's price was 30 pieces of silver. This is strong evidence against the suggestion often made that the 30 pieces were a down-payment made to Judas. That suggestion is perhaps so frequently offered because 30 pieces of silver seems such a low price. But Judas had asked: &quot;What will you give me, and I will betray Him unto you?&quot;, and the price agreed was 30 pieces of silver. But we need not be so surprised. Because surely we have all seen people make the most&nbsp;unwise and sinful decisions for the sake of money, even relatively small amounts of it. And the more I reflect upon these records, the more convinced I am that the crime of the cosmos, of all time in eternity, the worst action at any point of infinite time and space, was committed for love of money. And so pathetically little of it. It truly is the root of all evil. And such a pathetically small amount, the compensation price of a dead slave, that could only buy a piece of ground in the despised valley of Hinnom, the Potter's field, muddy and useless for building, from which much of the clay had already been dug out by the potters, surrounded by the smell of burning bodies and garbage that remained constantly in the valley of Hinnom. In these reflections is surely the most powerful warning which there could be against petty materialism. Peter had surely reflected upon all this when he wrote of &quot;the precious blood of Christ... unto you therefore who believe He is precious&quot; (1 Pet. 1:19; 2:7), using the same word translated here as &quot;valued&quot;. Indeed, that family of Greek words is used around 12 times by Peter in his letters; the tragedy of how the Lord was not &quot;valued&quot; by Judas and Israel was a tragedy to Peter, and he wanted the church to compensate for it. <em>We</em> are to value Him and His blood, far more than Judas and the Jews did.</p><p><em>By some of the sons of Israel- </em>Jesus was &ldquo;Him&hellip; whom they priced on the part of the sons of Israel&rdquo; (Mt. 27:9 RVmg.). The reference to &ldquo;the sons of Israel&rdquo; is surely an allusion to the sons of Jacob selling Joseph for his value.</p>