Judas' Suicide
Life of Jesus · Draft · BSB
Content revision: 79b06619068888e2 · No editorial review date recorded
Date: Final Passover through resurrection appearances. The crucifixion is commonly dated to AD 30 or 33. The closing stop extends through the forty-day appearance period in Acts; the whole group is not one eight-day interval.
Filled with remorse after Jesus’s condemnation, Judas returns the silver and dies. The chief priests use the money for a burial field, and Matthew connects the transaction with prophetic Scripture.
Matthew’s account and Acts 1 describe the field and Judas’s death differently; a single reconstructed sequence is not explicit in either. Matthew names Jeremiah while language also recalls Zechariah’s thirty silver pieces, so both connections deserve notice.
Primary Scripture
27:3 When Judas, who had betrayed Him, saw that Jesus was condemned, he was filled with remorse and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders.
27:4 “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood,” he said. “What is that to us?” they replied. “You bear the responsibility.”
27:5 So Judas threw the silver into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself.
27:6 The chief priests picked up the pieces of silver and said, “It is unlawful to put this into the treasury, since it is blood money.”
27:7 After conferring together, they used the money to buy the potter’s field as a burial place for foreigners.
27:8 That is why it has been called the Field of Blood to this day.
27:9 Then what was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled: “They took the thirty pieces of silver, the price set on Him by the people of Israel,
27:10 and they gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord had commanded me.”
Related Scripture
The thirty silver pieces and their disposal closely parallel Matthew’s wording.
Jeremiah’s potter and judgment imagery helps explain why Matthew’s prophetic connection is wider than Zechariah alone.
Acts gives a differing account of Judas and the field; compare the texts without presenting a reconstruction as explicit.
Location evidence
Matthew names the temple where Judas throws the money, but not where he dies. The city marker relates to that narrated temple action and does not locate the death or potter’s field.
Event map marker: Identified site; [longitude, latitude] = [35.23494, 31.77744]. This is a teaching marker, not an exact event venue.
Jerusalem: Identified site. Coordinates [longitude, latitude]: [35.23494, 31.77744]. Classification source: rule.
Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire
Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire
For the class
Why does Matthew continue from Judas’s remorse to the leaders’ handling of the money?
Interpretation and reuse
Narrative order is a reading arrangement, not a proven chronology. Dates retain their stated uncertainty. An identified locality does not establish the exact venue or prove an event. Region extents and routes are illustrative, not surveyed boundaries or ancient roads. Draft material has not completed editorial review.
Record source: theographic (457)
Record source: editorial
Events and places adapted from Theographic Bible Metadata (github.com/robertrouse/theographic-bible-metadata), CC BY-SA 4.0. This adapted data is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Place coordinates from OpenBible.info Bible Geocoding Data, CC BY 4.0.
Teaching stops, summaries and regional extents are original editorial content of this atlas.
Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain. https://berean.bible/licensing.htm