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408 VISIONS AND PROPHECIES OF ZECHARIAH

departed ; and he went away and hanged himself. And the chief priests took the pieces of silver, and said, It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, since it is the price of blood. And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter s field, to bury strangers in. Wherefore that field was called, The field of blood, unto this day. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by 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 ; and they gave them for the potter s field, as the Lord appointed me." l

It has been objected by Jews and others that there are certain discrepancies between the words of the prophecy and its fulfilment as recorded by Matthew. One of the alleged discrepancies is contained in the fact that " in the prophecy the thirty pieces of silver were weighed as wages for the shepherd," whereas in the Gospel narrative they are said to have been paid to Judas for the betrayal of Jesus.

" But, in truth, as soon as we trace back the form of the prophecy to its idea, the difference is resolved into harmony. The payment of the wages to the shepherd in the pro phetical announcement is simply the symbolical form in which the nation manifests its ingratitude for the love and fidelity shown towards it by the shepherd, and the sign that it will no longer have him as its shepherd, and therefore a sign of the blackest ingratitude and of hard-heartedness in return for the love displayed by the shepherd. The same ingratitude and the same hardness of heart are manifested in the resolution of the representatives of the Jewish nation, the high priests and elders, to put Jesus, their Saviour, to death, and to take Him prisoner by bribing the betrayer. The payment of thirty silverlings to the betrayer was, in fact, the wages with which the Jewish nation repaid Jesus for what He had done for the salvation of Israel ; and the contemptible sum which they paid to the betrayer was an expression of the deep contempt which they felt for Jesus.

" There is no great importance in this difference, that

1 Matt, xxvii. 3-10.