Zechariah 11:13
And the Lord said to me, “Throw it to the potter”—the handsome price at which they valued me! So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them to the potter at the house of the Lord. (NIV)
Today’s Reading: Zechariah 11:10-13 and Matthew 27:3-10
Zechariah was paid thirty pieces of silver for his work as the shepherd. This was an insult specifically because it was originally the amount God prescribed to Moses that was to be paid for a slave that was gored by an ox. So God told Zechariah to “throw it to the potter” and Zechariah did as God instructed and threw the silver pieces to the potter at the “house of the Lord”.
These events are very similar to the events that played out after Judah betrayed Jesus. After Jesus was arrested, Judas desperately wanted to undo what he had done. He thought by giving the money back that somehow that would bring some relief to the deep remorse he felt. But the elders wouldn’t take it back and the following events ensued:
“Then Judas threw the silver coins down in the Temple and went out and hanged himself. The leading priests picked up the coins. ‘It wouldn’t be right to put this money in the Temple treasury,’ they said, ‘since it was payment for murder.’ After some discussion they finally decided to buy the potter’s field, and they made it into a cemetery for foreigners. That is why the field is still called the Field of Blood” (Matt 27:5-8, NLT).
Just as Zechariah threw thirty pieces of silver to the potter at the temple, Judas threw his thirty pieces of silver into the temple and it was given to the potter for his field. Matthew attributes this prophecy to Jeremiah. As we discussed yesterday, this prophecy is a mash-up of Jeremiah’s and Zechariah’s prophecies. Jeremiah purchased a field from his cousin in a similar manner as the chief priests and elders.
Jeremiah was in prison and God sent him a message:
“At that time the Lord sent me a message. He said, ‘Your cousin Hanamel son of Shallum will come and say to you, “Buy my field at Anathoth. By law you have the right to buy it before it is offered to anyone else.”‘
“Then, just as the Lord had said he would, my cousin Hanamel came and visited me in the prison… Then I knew that the message I had heard was from the Lord.
“So I bought the field at Anathoth, paying Hanamel seventeen pieces of silver for it” (Jer 32:6-9).
Why did Matthew cite Jeremiah? I think there are many reasons but there are two that are significant to me. The first is that by citing Jeremiah he meant the scroll of Jeremiah which included the writings of Zechariah. Judas more closely fulfilled Zechariah’s prophecy than he did Jeremiah’s.
The second is that Jeremiah’s prophecy does contain a couple of nuggets. Jeremiah says that he knew it was the word of the Lord when his cousin came to visit him in prison. This is the same language used in Zechariah’s prophecy when he quit being the shepherd. When the oppressed of the flock saw him break his staff, they knew it was the word of the Lord.
The other nugget is found a bit later in Jeremiah 32. When Jeremiah bought the field, God told him to take the deed and seal it in a clay jar (undoubtably made by a potter) so it would preserve the deed for a long time. God was on the verge of allowing King Nebuchadnezzar to destroy Jerusalem and capture the land of Judah. The sealed deeds were God’s promise that the Jews would return to the land one day:
“Once more fields will be bought in this land of which you say, ‘It is a desolate waste, without people or animals, for it has been given into the hands of the Babylonians.’ Fields will be bought for silver, and deeds will be signed, sealed and witnessed in the territory of Benjamin, in the villages around Jerusalem, in the towns of Judah and in the towns of the hill country, of the western foothills and of the Negev, because I will restore their fortunes, declares the Lord.” (Jer 32:43-44)
God said that fields around Jerusalem would one day again be bought for silver. And in fact there was a specific field outside Jerusalem that was bought with the silver that was used to send His Son to the cross.
Christ in the Old Testament 
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