GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
ZECHARIAH 11:12-14
Zechariah has been delivering a prophecy about the way the Jews of Jerusalem rejected Christ during his ministry. In these verses he comes to a specific moment, when Judas betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver (Matthew 26:15).
12 Then I said to them, “If it seems good to you, give me my wages; but if not, keep them.” Then they weighed out thirty pieces of silver as my wages.
The price of a man between twenty and sixty years old for the purposes of his value in the tabernacle or temple was fifty shekels in the days of Moses (Leviticus 27:3) . Moses lived a thousand years before Zechariah. Even though this was a culture with almost no inflation whatsoever (inflation was very slow and very slight), the value of the Lord Jesus for his betrayal was barely a slave price; it was not the valued price of a free Jew, a man descended from the line of King David.
Luther sees irony and levity in the second sentence as the slave traders (that is, the chief priests of the Jews in the temple) consider whether thirty shekels, a slave price, is even too much to pay for the Son of God. Then they reluctantly weigh out the silver, careful not to pay any more than they have to.
13 The LORD said to me, “Throw it to the potter”– the glorious price they valued me with. So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the LORD, to the potter. 14 Then I broke my second staff, Union, ending the brotherhood between Judah and Israel.
Did a potter, or more than one potter, set up shop close to the wall of the temple? It would be a wise place to do it. There were many ceremonial dishes made of silver and gold in the temple, but there would have been a constant need for additional pottery as people brought in their grain, wine, salt, and other goods as offerings. Jeremiah 18:2 locates one potter’s house on the south side of the temple when the Lord says, “Get up and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will reveal my words to you.” “Down” from the temple walls was south. West and north were up or across, and going east of the temple would mean going outside the walls and into the Kidron Valley. Also, Zechariah shows that the potter in question was actually inside the temple, since the money was thrown “into the house of the Lord, to the potter.”
This is one of many passages that prophesy the betrayal of Jesus. First, there was a hint from David: “You will break them to pieces like pottery” (Psalm 2:9). And again: “He knows how we are formed. He remembers that we are dust” (Psalm 103:14). These are hints about the potter, but Luther holds them up as clear proof in light of the Matthew passages. There is also the Psalm: “My close friend, whom I trusted, he who shared my bread, has lifted up his heel against me” (Psalm 41:9). All these show that God was always aware that Jesus would be betrayed by his friend. God was not responsible for that betrayal any more than a mommy is responsible for knowing that her baby will take a tumble onto his diaper while learning to walk.
But there is even more about the betrayal: Jeremiah also says: “Can I not do with you as this potter does? See, like clay in the potter’s hands, this is what you are in my hands, house of Israel” (Jeremiah 18:6). All of this is fulfilled in the Gospels. “They took the thirty pieces of silver, the price the sons of Israel had set for him, and they gave them for the potter’s field” (Matthew 27:9-10).
Now, when Matthew quotes that passage, he says it is from Jeremiah (Matthew 27:9), even though it is obviously from Zechariah, from the verse before us. If this seems like a problem, the best answers, I think, are these:
1, Both Jeremiah and Zechariah describe the potter and the 30 pieces of silver, but Matthew quotes using the name of just one of them.
2, Matthew might be conflating (mixing) the prophecies into one, but using only the name of Jeremiah because he says more about the potter.
3, Matthew might be speaking in very general terms, “without any concern for the name of the prophet” (Luther).
4, As with the double-quotation in Mark 1:2-3, where “Isaiah” is quoted when both Isaiah and Malachi are meant, the more famous of the two is cited, and, as Paul says, “it is the lesser who is blessed by the greater.”
But now it’s time to move on to verse 14:
When the second staff, “Union,” was broken, this “ended the brotherhood between Judah and Israel.” Since the old Israel, the northern tribes such as Ephraim and Manasseh, were long gone, and this is a prophecy about the time of Christ, we take this with terms that are understood apart from the northern kingdom of Jeroboam. The “true Israel” is the one apart from the old covenant, the old laws, and circumcision. This is “the Israel of God” (Galatians 6:15-16), the true people of God as opposed to those who rejected Christ and wanted salvation through obedience to the law of Moses. This is what Paul wrote about: “To the man who trusts in God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness” (Romans 4:5). There is no longer any brotherhood between the true Jews, that is, the holy Christian Church, and those who are Jews according to the letter of the law. People who try to talk about a “Judeo-Christian” god don’t know what they’re talking about. They would have an easier time talking about a North Korean-American government or clouds of stone or lead ice cream. The God of the Old Testament Jews and the God of the modern Christian church are one and the same, but everyone who rejects Christ has rejected the God of the Old Testament just as surely as the prophets of Baal rejected him on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18). They have no god listening to their prayers, for as Zechariah says: “just as he called and they would not listen, ‘they called, and I would not listen,’ says the LORD of hosts” (Zechariah 7:13). That means that even when they quote the Scriptures and cry out with prayers taught to them by David, Solomon, Daniel and Ezra, they are praying to a false god (since they have turned away from Christ) and are breaking the First, Second, and Third Commandments with every single syllable and breath of their Sabbath worship. They only enrage God and bring down his wrath, because he said, “This is my Son, listen to him,” but they refuse to do it.
Let’s turn our hearts always to Christ. He freed us from the Law of Moses, first by keeping it perfectly in our place, and also by paying for the guilty debt of our sins, incurred for failing to keep it in any way, to any degree, with any moment of our lives at all. “He was delivered over to death for our sins, and was raised to life for our justification” (Romans 4:25). Solomon said: “The righteous man leads a blameless life” (Proverbs 20:7), and Jesus alone has done this. If anyone wants to debate this, he should begin with Moses’ many sins, such as murder (Exodus 2:12), rebellion against his bondage and fleeing from his owner (Exodus 2:15), rejecting the divine call of the Lord (Exodus 4:13), incurring the wrath of God because of his constant arguing with God (Exodus 4:14), failing to circumcise his son (Exodus 4:24-25), and disobeying the Lord’s command to honor God before Israel at Kadesh (Numbers 20:10; 27:14). To this we must add his original sin for which we are all at fault (Psalm 51:5). But God forgave Moses and has forgiven us through Jesus. What sins are laid at your feet? They were picked up by Christ on his way to the cross. He is your Savior and you are his forgiven servant. Love him with all of your life today, with every sound from your throat, every twitch of your fingers, and every step you take. Show your love for your Lord.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
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Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota
God’s Word for You – Zechariah 11:12-14 Thirty pieces of silver