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the mode of fulfilment has exerted some influence upon the choice of words. This involuntary allusion shows itself in the reproduction of ואקחה וגו, “I took the thirty silverlings, and threw them to the potter,” by “they took the thirty pieces of silver,... and gave them for the potter's field;” whilst “the price of him that was valued” is only a free rendering of אדר חיקר, and “of the children of Israel” an explanation of מעליהם.
The only real and important difficulty in the quotation is to be found in the fact that Matthew quotes the words of Zechariah as “that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet,” whereas all that he quotes is taken simply and solely from the prophet Zechariah. The reading Ἱερεμίου in Matthew is critically unassailable; and the assumption that Matthew refers to some lost scripture, or to a saying of Jeremiah handed down by oral tradition, and others of a similar kind, are simply arbitrary loopholes, which cannot come into any further consideration at all. On the other hand, the attempts made to explain the introduction of Jeremiah's name in the place of that of Zechariah, on the ground that, so far as the principal features are concerned, our prophecy is simply a resumption of the prophecy in Jer 19:1-15, and that Zechariah announces a second fulfilment of this prophecy (Hengstenberg), or that it rests upon the prophecy of Jeremiah 18, in which the potter is also introduced, and that its fulfilment goes beyond Zechariah's prophecy in those features which deviate from the words of Zechariah, so that Jeremiah 18-19 was fulfilled at the same time (Kliefoth), are deserving of serious consideration. Matthew, it is supposed, intended to point to this relation by mentioning Jeremiah instead of Zechariah. We would support this view without reserve, if the connection assumed to exist between our prophecy and the prophecies of Jeremiah 18 and Jer 19:1-15 could only be shown to be a probable one. But the proof adduced by Hengstenberg that our prophecy rests upon Jeremiah 18 reduces itself to these two remarks: (1) That the potter, of whom Jeremiah purchased a pot (Jer 19:1-15) to break it in the valley of Ben-hinnom, had his workshop in this valley, which was regarded with abhorrence, as being unclean; and (2) that Zechariah was to throw the bad wages into the valley of Ben-hinnom precisely at the spot where this potter's workshop was.