By Sam Shamoun (Original article 1, 2, 3)
The following excerpt is taken from the late Dr. Gleason L. Archer’s book, Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, published by Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, MI 1982, p. 350.
Why does Matthew 27:9 attribute to Jeremiah a prophecy from Zechariah?
Matthew 27:9-10 describes the purchase of Potter’s Field with Judas Iscariot’s money as fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy: “Then that which was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled, saying, `And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of one whose price had been set by the sons of Israel; and they gave them for the Potter’s Field, as the Lord directed me” (NASB). The remarkable thing about this quotation is that the greater portion of it is actually from Zechariah 11:12-13, which reads as follows: “And I said to them, `If it is good in your sight, give me my wages; but if not, never mind!’ So they weighed out thirty shekels of silver as my wages. Then Yahweh said to me, `Throw it to the potter, that magnificent price at which I was valued by them’. So I took the thirty shekels of silver and threw them to the potter in the house of Yahweh.” There are significant differences between the Zechariah passage and the quotation in Matthew, which has the prophet paying out–or least giving–the purchase money, and has him turning over the money for a field rather than giving it to the potter personally. Yet the whole point of the quotation in Matthew is directed toward the purchase of the field. The Zechariah passage says nothing at all about purchasing a field; indeed, it does not even mention a field at all.
But as we turn to Jeremiah 32:6-9, we find the prophet purchasing a field in Anathoth for a certain number of shekels. Jeremiah 18:2 describes the prophet as watching a potter fashioning earthenware vessels in his house. Jeremiah 19:2 indicates that there was a potter near the temple, having his workshop in the Valley of Hinnom. Jeremiah 19:11 reads: “Thus says Yahweh of hosts: `Even so I will break this people and this city as one breaks a potter’s vessel, that cannot be made whole again; and they shall bury them in Tophet.’” It would seem, therefore, that Zechariah’s casting of his purchase money to the potter dated back to the symbolic actions of Jeremiah. Yet it is only Jeremiah that mentions the “field” of the potter–which is the principal point of Matthew’s quotation. Matthew is therefore combining and summarizing elements of prophetic symbolism both from Zechariah and from Jeremiah. But since Jeremiah is the more prominent of the two prophets, he mentions Jeremiah’s name by preference to that of the minor prophet.
A similar procedure is followed by Mark 1:2-3, which attributes only to Isaiah a combined quotation from Malachi 3:1 and Isaiah 40:3. In that case also, only the more famous of the two prophets is mentioned by name. Since that was the normal literary practice of the first century A.D., when the Gospels were written, the authors can scarcely be faulted for not following the modern practice of precise identification and footnoting (which could never have become feasible until after the transition had been made from the scroll to the codex and the invention of the printing press).
FURTHER READING
MATTHEW 27:9-10: A MISTAKEN ATTRIBUTION?
