John Calvin Commentary Matthew 27:9

"Then was fulfilled that which was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet, saying, And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him that was priced, whom [certain] of the children of Israel did price;" — Matthew 27:9 (ASV)

Then was fulfilled what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet. How the name of Jeremiah crept in, I confess that I do not know, nor do I trouble myself much to inquire. The passage itself plainly shows that the name of Jeremiah has been written by mistake instead of Zechariah (Zechariah 11:13), for in Jeremiah we find nothing of this sort, nor anything that even approaches it.

Now, that other passage from Zechariah, if some skill is not used in applying it, might seem to have been improperly distorted to a wrong meaning. However, if we attend to the rule that the apostles followed in quoting Scripture, we will easily perceive that what we find there is highly applicable to Christ.

The Lord, after complaining that his labors were of no avail as long as he discharged the office of a shepherd, says that he is compelled by the troublesome and unpleasant nature of the employment to relinquish it altogether, and therefore declares that he will break his crook and will be a shepherd no longer. He afterwards adds that when he asked for his salary, they gave him thirty pieces of silver.

The meaning of these words is that he was treated quite contemptuously, as if he had been some lowly and ordinary laborer. For the ceremonies and vain pretenses by which the Jews recompensed his acts of kindness are compared by him to thirty pieces of silver, as if they had been the unworthy and despicable payment of a cowherd or a day-laborer. Therefore, he tells them to throw it before a potter in the temple, as if he had said: “As for this fine present which they make to me, which would be no less dishonorable for me to accept than it is contemptuous for them to offer, let them rather spend it on purchasing tiles or bricks for repairing the cracks of the temple.”

To make it still more evident that Christ is the God of armies—towards whom the people had been malicious and ungrateful from the beginning—when he was manifested in the flesh (1 Timothy 3:16), it became necessary that what had formerly been spoken figuratively should now be literally and visibly accomplished in his person. So then, when he was compelled by their malice to take leave of them and to withdraw his labors from them as unworthy of such a privilege, they valued him at thirty pieces of silver. And this disdain for the Son of God was the crowning act of their extreme impiety.

The price of him that was valued. Matthew does not quote the words of Zechariah, for he merely alludes to the metaphor under which the Lord then complains of the people’s ingratitude. But the meaning is the same: while the Jews ought to have entirely devoted themselves and all that they possessed to the Lord, they contemptuously dismissed him with a meager payment, as if, by governing them for so many ages, he had deserved nothing more than any cowherd would have received for the labors of a single year. He complains, therefore, that although he is beyond all estimation, he was valued by them at so low a price.

Whom they of the children of Israel did value. This expression, which Matthew uses near the end, must be taken in a general sense. Judas had struck a bargain with the priests, who were the avowed representatives of the whole people, so that it was the Jews who set Christ up for sale, and he was sold, as it were, by the voice of the public crier. The price was such as was fit to be given to a potter.