The evaluating of Jesus the Messianic Shepherd had been consummated. At thirty silver shekels, the price of a slave according to the Mosaic Law covenant! A majestic value!

44, 45. (a) What was done with the money at which Zechariah was priced? (b) What was done with the money that Judas Iscariot accepted for betraying Jesus?

⁴⁴ Judas Iscariot accepted this price. He had been the treasurer of the twelve apostles, but he did not put the money into their money box. He kept it for himself​—for a while! (John 12:4-6) In the ancient case of the prophet Zechariah, he did not keep the thirty silver shekels that had been paid to him as his wages. The money really belonged to his Master, Jehovah, and so Jehovah said to him: “Throw it to the treasury.” Zechariah did so. (Zechariah 11:12, 13) His action was a premonition of something. Not that Zechariah prefigured Judas Iscariot, but, just the same, like Zechariah, Judas did not keep his thirty silver shekels. What he did with them, or, rather, what resulted from his disposing of the betrayal money is reported to us:

⁴⁵ “When it had become morning, all the chief priests and the older men of the people held a consultation against Jesus so as to put him to death. And, after binding him, they led him off and handed him over to Pilate the governor. Then Judas, who betrayed him, seeing he had been condemned, felt remorse and turned the thirty silver pieces back to the chief priests and older men, saying: ‘I sinned when I betrayed righteous blood.’ They said: ‘What is that to us? You must see to that!’ So he threw the silver pieces into the temple and withdrew, and went off and hanged himself. But the chief priests took the silver pieces and said: ‘It is not lawful to drop them into the sacred treasury, because they are the price of blood.’ After consulting together, they bought with them the potter’s field to bury strangers. Therefore that field has been called ‘Field of Blood’ to this very day. Then what was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled, saying: ‘And they took the thirty silver pieces, the price upon the man that was priced, the one on whom some of the sons of Israel set a price, and they gave them for the potter’s field, according to what Jehovah had commanded me.’”​—Matthew 27:1-10.

46. (a) How did the apostle Peter later speak about Judas Iscariot and the disposal of the thirty shekels? (b) What inconsistency did the priests show respecting the blood that those thirty shekels represented?

⁴⁶ Because the money used by the priests in the purchase of the potter’s field had been provided by Judas Iscariot, the apostle Peter speaks of Judas as having bought the field for the burial of Jews who died while visiting in Jerusalem or of proselytes. Peter said to the Christian congregation regarding Judas: “This very man, therefore, purchased a field with the wages for unrighteousness, and pitching head foremost [after hanging himself up high] he noisily burst in his midst and his intestines were poured out. It also became known to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that that field was called in their language A·kelʹda·ma, that is, Field of Blood.” (Acts 1:18, 19) The priests merely acted for Judas in taking the money out of the temple sanctuary where Judas had thrown the thirty silver shekels and conveyed it to the seller of the potter’s field. The priests saw the unfitness of dropping the “price of blood” into the temple treasury, but at the same time they thought themselves fit to serve in that temple in spite of their having caused that blood to be shed.

47. (a) How could it be that the apostle Matthew could say Jeremiah and yet really mean Zechariah? (b) How does the Aramaic Version dispose of the difficulty?

⁴⁷ We notice that, in Matthew 27:9, 10, the apostle Matthew says that it was the saying of the prophet Jeremiah that was fulfilled. If Matthew was referring to that section of the Hebrew Scriptures known as The Prophets and this section in Matthew’s day was headed by the prophecy of Jeremiah, then the name Jeremiah would include all the other prophetic books, including that of Zechariah. In such a case Matthew would really be meaning Zechariah although using the name Jeremiah.b The Holy Bible from Ancient Eastern Manuscripts (Peshitta) omits the name and reads: “Then what was spoken by the prophet was fulfilled, namely, I took the thirty pieces of silver, the costly price which was bargained with the children of Israel, and I gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord commanded me.” (George M. Lamsa, 1957) The Syriac New Testament translated into English from the Peshitto Version, by James Murdock (copyrighted 1893), reads the same way, in omitting the prophet’s name.c

48. (a) How does Matthew’s loose translation of Zechariah’s prophecy show the disposal of the thirty shekels? (b) This fulfillment of Zechariah’s prophecy confirms that he pictured whom here?

⁴⁸ Since Matthew 27:9, 10 corresponds with Zechariah 11:13 and with nothing in the book of Jeremiah, Matthew’s quotation must have been a loose translation of Zechariah 11:13. The way in which Matthew translated Zechariah 11:13 was evidently meant to show how the fulfillment of Zechariah 11:13 worked out, namely, that “they took,” the priestly representatives of Israel took, the thirty silver pieces from the floor of the temple, and “they [the priests, acting instead of the individual, Judas Iscariot] gave them for the potter’s field.” Zechariah 11:13 does not tell us how the thirty silver shekels that Zechariah threw into the treasury of Jehovah’s temple were particularly disposed of later. Matthew, however, does tell us how the fulfillment of the prophecy did dispose of the money, to fit the altered circumstances. This fulfillment would confirm that the shepherd Zechariah here pictured the betrayed and sold Messianic Shepherd, Jesus, so cheaply priced.

50. How has Christendom, in effect, placed a cheap price on the Messianic Shepherd Jesus Christ, how is she guilty of covenant breaking, and how will failure to have God’s Pleasantness affect her?

⁵⁰ Like ancient Israel, Christendom with her hundreds of sects has rejected the shepherdly care of the Messianic Shepherd, the heavenly Jesus Christ. How so? Not according to her pious professions, of course, but according to her acts. She has betrayed him by betraying his true disciples, whom she has persecuted, even to the death in many cases. She has refused the services of the spiritual shepherds whom the heavenly Messianic Shepherd has sent to her. What she has done to them, she has, in effect, done to him. (Matthew 25:40, 45; Mark 9:37; John 15:20, 21) Thus she has placed a cheap price on his shepherdly services, rejecting them.