Zechariah 11:13 - Exposition

The Lord said unto me. The Lord takes the insult as offered to himself in the person of his representative. Cast it unto the potter; κάθες αὐτοὺς εἰς τὸ χωνευ τήριον , "Lay them in the foundry, and I will see if it is approved;" Vulgate; Projice illud ad statuarium; the Syriac and Targum have, "Put it into the treasury" ( Malachi 3:10 ). This involves an alteration of the text, and is in itself an improbable reading, as God could not be made to tell the prophet to throw this despicable wage into his treasury, unless, perchance, it is said ironically. There may be an undesigned coincidence here. In Matthew 27:5 the council discuss the propriety of putting the thirty pieces of silver into the treasury. But taking our present text as genuine, commentators usually consider the phrase as a proverbial expression for contemptuous treatment; as the Greeks said, ἐς κόρακας , as the Germans say, "zum Schinder," "to the knacker," and we, "to the dogs." There is, however, no trace elsewhere of any such proverb, nor do we know how it could have arisen; it likewise does not very well suit the last clause of the verse, "I cast them to the potter in the house of the Lord." If we substitute the supposed analogous expression, "I threw them to the dogs," we see how unseemly would be the proverb in this connection. The rendering of the Jews in old time, adopted recently by Knabenbauer, "Cast them to the Creator," is considered by Dr. Pusey to be unidiomatic, and involves great difficulties. It seems simpler to consider that the command, "cast it to the potter," implies contemptuous rejection of the sum, and at the same time intimates the ultimate destination to which, in the sight of Omniscience, it was directed. The potter is named as the workman who makes the meanest utensils out of the vilest material. That this was ordered and executed in vision is plain; how much the prophet understood we cannot tell. The ambiguous and highly typical order was explained and fulfilled to the letter by the action of Judas Iscariot, as the evangelist testifies ( Matthew 27:5-10 ). A ( the ) goodly price , etc. This is ironical, of course. Such was the price at which they estimated the good Shepherd's services. Cast them to the potter in the house of the Lord. This rejection of the paltry wage took place in the house of the Lord (in the vision), because the insult had been really offered to him, and this was the natural place where oblations would be made; thus the transaction was represented as formal and national. Whether the potter was seen in the temple we know not. The prophet was made to connect him in some way with the business; and we learn from the fulfilment that the potter did in the end receive the money, which was paid for his field applied to an unclean purpose. In Matthew 27:9 the two verses, 12, 13, with some variations, are quoted as "spoken by Jeremy the prophet." Hence some attribute this part of Zechariah to Jeremiah; and others think that in St. Matthew the present name is a mistake. The probability is that the evangelist did not name any prophet, but that some early transcriber, remembering the purchase of the field in Jeremiah 32:6-12 , attributed the quotation to that prophet. Or we may suppose that inspiration did not extend to all minor details, nor save the writers from unimportant errors.