REJECTION OF THE TRUE SHEPHERD 409
here the prophet throws the money into the house of Jehovah to the potter; whereas, according to Matthew s account, Judas threw the silverlings into the Temple, and the high priests would not put the money into the Divine treasury, because it was blood-money, but applied it to the purchase of a potter s field, which received the name of a field of blood. For by this very fact not only was the prophecy almost literally fulfilled ; but, so far as the sense is concerned, it was so exactly fulfilled that every one could see that the same God who had spoken through the pro phet had, by the secret operation of His omnipotent power, which extends even to the ungodly, so arranged the matter that Judas threw the money into the Temple, to bring it before the face of God as blood-money, and to call down the vengeance of God upon the nation ; and that the high priest, by purchasing the potter s field for this money, which received the name of field of blood in consequence unto this day, perpetuated the memorial of the sin com mitted against their Messiah. Matthew indicates this in the words as the Lord commanded me, which correspond to and Jehovah said unto me, in ver. 1 3 of our pro phecy ; on which H. Aug. W. Meyer has correctly observed, That the words, " as the Lord commanded me," express the fact that the application of the wages of treachery to the purchase of the potter s field took place in accordance with the purpose of God, whose command the prophet had received. As God had directed the prophet how to proceed with the thirty silverlings, so was it with the antitypical ful filment of the prophecy by the high priests, and thus was the purpose of the Divine will accomplished. " l
There remains, however, one real difficulty in the citation of this prophecy by Matthew, namely, in the fact that Matthew quotes the words of Zechariah as that which was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet.
It was the attempt to justify the inerrancy of this quotation in Matthew, which, as I have shown in my " Introduction " to the second part of Zechariah, led the
1 Keil.
