404 VISIONS AND PROPHECIES OF ZECHARIAH
And although He has every right to demand this " hire," He leaves it to His professed people, upon whom such bounteous care and attention has been lavished by Him, to make a free return to Him of their love and gratitude in j \ order that the actual condition of their hearts towards Him may be thus tested. " Give me," He says, " my hire or reward/ for all that I have been and done for you, if you think well (lit., if it seem good in your eyes ), and if not, forbear . For, as has been well expressed by another writer, " God does not force our free will or constrain our service. He places life and death before us, and bids us choose life. By His grace alone we can choose Him ; but we can refuse His grace and Himself."
That which they did offer the prophet in return for His services is meant to express the black ingratitude of their hearts for the shepherd care of Jehovah. Instead of " wages," as Keil well expresses it, they offer Him an insult " so they weighed for My hire thirty pieces of silver" which was exactly the amount which, according to the law, was to be paid in compensation for a slave gored to death by an ox. 1 " And Jehovah said unto me, Cast it" (hishlikh " fling it " with contempt as a thing unclean 2 ) " unto the potter, the goodly price (or, the magnificence of the price ) that I was prised at of them : so I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them, in the Jwuse of Jehovah, unto the potter.
There are two or three important points in this passage which need explanation :
( i ) What is meant by casting to the potter ? Many different conjectures have been advanced in answer to this question. The most generally accepted explanation by evangelical writers is that given by Hengstenberg, namely, that it is equivalent to casting a thing into an unclean place. This explanation rests on the supposition that the
1 Ex. xxi. 32.
- The verb hishlikh is used for casting torn flesh to the dogs, Ex. xxii. 31 ; of u corpse which was cast unburied, Isa. xiv. 19 ; and in many other such connections ; and of idols " cast " to the moles and bats, Isa. ii. 20.
