Bible Study on Matthew 26, verses 14 to 25, Judas betrays Christ to the chief priests

 

Matthew 26:14 ¶  Then one of the twelve, called Judas Iscariot, went unto the chief priests, 15  And said unto them, What will ye give me, and I will deliver him unto you? And they covenanted with him for thirty pieces of silver. 16  And from that time he sought opportunity to betray him.

 

Judas Iscariot means Judas of Kerioth, according to Strong’s dictionary. Kerioth was a city of ancient Moab. Moab would be in Southern Jordan today.

 

See the prophecy of this betrayal in Zechariah.

 

Zechariah 11:12  And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver. 13  And the LORD said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prised at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the LORD.

 

Also see Jeremiah 18, which will be alluded to in the next chapter referring to this betrayal. Some say the reason that Jeremiah and not Zechariah will be mentioned later is the way the scrolls of the Hebrew Bible were put together and read at that time with the section on The Prophets beginning with Jeremiah so it would natural to refer to that scroll as Jeremiah.

 

Matthew 26:17 ¶  Now the first day of the feast of unleavened bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying unto him, Where wilt thou that we prepare for thee to eat the passover? 18  And he said, Go into the city to such a man, and say unto him, The Master saith, My time is at hand; I will keep the passover at thy house with my disciples. 19  And the disciples did as Jesus had appointed them; and they made ready the passover. 20  Now when the even was come, he sat down with the twelve. 21  And as they did eat, he said, Verily I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me. 22  And they were exceeding sorrowful, and began every one of them to say unto him, Lord, is it I? 23  And he answered and said, He that dippeth his hand with me in the dish, the same shall betray me. 24  The Son of man goeth as it is written of him: but woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! it had been good for that man if he had not been born. 25  Then Judas, which betrayed him, answered and said, Master, is it I? He said unto him, Thou hast said.

 

Here is yet another example of an anonymous person performing a singular task that furthers God’s plan along. We know nothing about this person’s life but that he had been chosen by God to provide a place for this last Passover meal of Jesus and His Apostles and was probably a follower of Christ who must have heard Christ foretell that He would be sacrificed. He tells them to tell the man My time is at hand, that is, near or soon.

 

The disciples prepared the meal and Christ sat down with them for this momentous occasion and only He knew it was their last meal together before His crucifixion and resurrection.

 

He announced that one of them would betray Him. Then, Judas, knowing full well it was Him tested Christ’s knowledge of hidden things asking Him if it was Judas who would betray Him. Jesus announced, “you said it.”

 

Now as I have said previously, I did not want to make this a harmonization of the gospels but Matthew doesn’t tell the whole story or go into a great detail about the Last Supper in some of the aspects that other gospels do. What seems to be important from His memory and confirmed by the Holy Spirit is that Judas understood that Jesus knew he was the traitor. Judas is not mentioned in the rest of the chapter and we have other gospels saying that he left when he was identified by Christ. We will get to the account in John, chapter 13, which is more complete.