Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Acts 1:18

"(Now this man obtained a field with the reward of his iniquity; and falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out." — Acts 1:18 (ASV)

Luke now adds a parenthesis concerning the awful fate of Judas, presenting the tradition he has received (cf. v.6) and emphasizing the awfulness of Judas’s fate, thus suggesting a basis for the disciples’ perplexity in trying to comprehend the plan of God.

The difficulty of reconciling 1:18–19 with Mt 27:3–10 is well known and often considered the most intractable contradiction in the NT. The problem chiefly concerns how Judas died. But it also involves such questions as Who bought the field? and Why was it called “Field of Blood”? These latter matters are perhaps not too difficult. Probably the common explanation suffices: The chief priests bought the potter’s field in Judas’s name with the thirty silver coins belonging to him, and the local Jerusalemites (particularly Christians) nicknamed it “Field of Blood” because they felt it had been purchased with “blood money.” The major question as to how Judas died, however, is not so easily answered.

Had he “hanged himself” (Matthew 27:5)? Or was it that “he fell headlong, his body burst open and all his intestines spilled out” (Acts 1:18)? We shall probably never know the exact answer. But though the precise solution seems imponderable, the problem is not very different from many other differences among the evangelists in presenting the words and activity of Jesus. If, as seems likely, each writer wrote from the standpoint of his own theological purposes to the specific interests and appreciation of his audience, it is not too difficult to believe that in the context of Matthew’s fulfillment theme it was sufficient for him and his readers to portray Judas’s awful end with the terse expression “he hanged himself.” But this would hardly suffice for Luke, Theophilus, and others in the Gentile world. Gentiles under Stoic influence generally looked on suicide as morally neutral. In order, therefore, to stress the awfulness of Judas’s situation in a way that would grip his readers, Luke spelled out the gory details of Judas’s suicide. He also highlights that what had happened to Judas was a divine necessity.