Matthew 27 Pt. 2 – How Judas Ended His Life!

Matthew was the only Gospel writer to record the account of what happened to Judas and how he ended his life. But Matthew gives us some very interesting insights into how the Scriptures were fulfilled even through the actions of Judas. One of the things that stands out is that Matthew is the only one to use the term ‘went and hanged himself‘ (Matt.27:5), as there is no other occurrence of that phrase elsewhere in the New Testament. However, Matthew must have known that the phrase does occur once in the LXX of 2 Sam.17:23 (i.e., the Greek translation of the Old Testament), where David’s betrayer did the same thing – Ahithophel went and hung himself. Is there any connection? Well, Matthew seemed to think so, and it shows how well he knew the Old Testament, or that the Holy Spirit guided him, and the Holy Spirit reminded him of these verses.
However, then when it comes to Matt.27:9-10, we might think that Matthew got it all wrong when he wrote, ‘Then was fulfilled what had been spoken by the prophet Jeremiah…., since you see it was actually Zechariah who wrote those words in Zech.11:11-13. So we have to ask, “What was going on there?” Well it seems that Matthew’s mind was triggered by what Judas did and he saw a combination of Jer.19:1-13 and Zech.11:11-13, and put 2 and 2 together, and saw that in some way Zechariah was also fulfilled in Jer.19, and ultimately this was fulfilled through the actions of Judas.

If you’d like to watch the video from this service, you can do so by clicking on this link!

Michael Robson