Albert Barnes Commentary Zechariah 11:13

"And Jehovah said unto me, Cast it unto the potter, the goodly price that I was prized at by them. And I took the thirty [pieces] of silver, and cast them unto the potter, in the house of Jehovah." — Zechariah 11:13 (ASV)

And the Lord said to me, Cast it - As a thing vile and rejected, as torn flesh was to be cast to dogs (Exodus 22:31), or a corpse was cast unburied (Isaiah 14:19; Isaiah 34:3; Jeremiah 14:16; Jeremiah 22:19; Jeremiah 26:23; Jeremiah 36:30), or the dead body of Absalom was cast into the pit (2 Samuel 18:17), or the dust of the idolaters into the brook Kidron by Josiah (2 Kings 23:12), or the idols to the moles and the bats (Isaiah 2:20, and Ezekiel 20:8); or Judah and Israel from the face of God (2 Kings 13:23; 2 Kings 17:20; 2 Kings 24:20; Jeremiah 52:3) into a strange land (Deuteronomy 29:27 (verse 28 in English versions)); Coniah and his seed, a vessel in which is no pleasure (Jeremiah 22:28), into a land which they knew not; or the rebels against God, who said, “Let us cast away their cords from us” (Psalms 2:3); or wickedness was cast into the Ephah (Zechariah 5:8); once it is added, “for loathing” (Ezekiel 16:5).

To the potter - The words exactly correspond with the event, that the “thirty pieces of silver” were “cast” or flung away; that their ultimate destination was the potter, whose field was bought with them; but that they were not cast directly to him (which was a contemptuous act, such as would not be used either for a gift or a purchase), but were cast to him “in the house of the Lord.” They were “flung away” by the remorse of Judas, and, in God’s Providence, came to the potter. Whether any portion of this was a direct symbolic action of the prophet, or whether it was a prophetic vision, in which Zechariah himself was an actor, and saw himself in the character which he described, doing what he relates, cannot now be said with certainty, since God has not told us.

It seems to me more probable, that these actions belonged to the vision, because in other symbolic actions of the prophets, no other actors take part. It is to the last degree unlikely that Zechariah, at whose preaching Zerubbabel and Joshua and all the people set themselves earnestly to rebuild the temple, should have had so worthless a price offered to him. The casting of a price, which God condemned, into the house of God, at the command of God, and so implying His acceptance of it, would be inconsistent. It was fulfilled, in act consistently, in Judas’s remorse; in that he “flung away the pieces of silver,” which had stained his soul with innocent blood, “in the temple,” perhaps remembering the words of Zechariah; perhaps wishing to give to pious uses, too late, money which was the price of his soul. However, God, even through the chief priests, rejected it, and so it came to the potter, its ultimate destination in the Providence of God.

Osorius: “He says, ‘Cast it unto the potter,’ that they might understand that they would be broken as a potter’s vessel.”

A goodly price, that I was prized at by them - Literally, “the magnificence of the value, at which I was valued by them!” The strong irony is carried on by the phrase, “at which I was valued by them,” as in the idiom, “You were precious in my sight” (1 Samuel 26:21; Psalms 72:14; 2 Kings 1:13–14; Isaiah 43:4). Precious the thought of God to David (Psalms 139:17); precious the redemption of the soul of man (Psalms 49:9); and precious was the Shepherd who came to them; precious was the value at which He was valued by them.

And yet He, who was so valued, was Almighty God. For so it stands: Thus saith the Lord God, Cast it unto the potter, the goodly price that I was prized at of them.

The name, the potter, connects the prophecy with that former prophecy of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 19:1–15), denouncing the judgment of God for the shedding of innocent blood, by which they had defiled the valley of the son of Hinnom, which was at the entry of the gate of the pottery, and which, through the vengeance of God there, should be called the valley of slaughter (Jeremiah 19:6).

The price of this innocent Blood, by the shedding of which the iniquities of their fathers were filled up, should rest on that same place, for whose sake God said, “I will break this people and this city, as one breaketh a potter’s vessel, that cannot be made whole again” (Jeremiah 19:11). So then Matthew may have quoted this prophecy as Jeremiah’s, to signify how the woes, denounced on the sins committed in this same place, should be brought upon it through this last crowning sin, and “all the righteous blood which had been shed, should come upon that generation.”

None of the other cases of mixed quotation come up to this. Mark quotes two prophecies, of Malachi and of Isaiah as Isaiah’s (Mark 1:2–3). Matthew blends in one, words of Isaiah (Isaiah 62:1) and Zechariah (Zechariah 9:9) as the prophet (Matthew 21:4–5). Our Lord unites Isaiah 56:7 and Jeremiah 7:11 with the words, It is written.

Of earlier fathers, Tertullian simply quotes the prophecy as Jeremiah’s (adv. Marc. iv. 40).

Origen says, “Jeremiah is not said to have prophesied this anywhere in his books, either what are read in the Churches, or reported (referuntur) among the Jews. I suspect that it is an error of writing, or that it is some secret writing of Jeremiah in which it is written” (in Matt. p. 916).

Eusebius says, “Consider, since this is not in the prophet Jeremiah, whether we must think that it was removed from it by some wickedness, or whether it was a clerical error of those who made the copies of the Gospels carelessly” (Dem. Ev. x. p. 481).