< Previous | Contents | Next >
3. At odds with himself, he took his moneybag, tossed it before the chief priests and council elders and said,
4. "I have done evil to this person because I was thinking only of gold and silver and goods and wealth.
5. "I repent that I have betrayed innocent blood because his teachings do not seem evil to me."
6. But the chief priests and elders replied, "Of what concern is that to us?
7. "Behold, it is up to you what you want to do to live in peace with yourself."
8. And Juda Ihariot wept and fled from there, and soon he hanged himself from a tree branch in the field of the potter beyond the walls of the city.
9. The chief priests, however, took the pieces of silver and said, "It is use less to put them into the collection box, because this is blood money. What shall we do with it?"
10. Then one of the sons of the elders came forth and said, "l followed Juda Ihariot and he has hanged himself from a tree branch in the field of the potter"
11. Thereupon Caiaphas, the high priest, said, "Well then, give this blood money to the potter and buy his field with it for the burial of strangers.”
12. At dawn the following day the business matter was settled, and Juda Ihariot, the betrayer of Jmmanuel, was the first to be buried in the field.
13. But the chief priests and elders of the council spread the news among the people that Judas Iscariot, the disciple of Jmmanuel, had hanged himself as Jmmanuel's betrayer and was hurriedly buried in the field of the potter.
14. The people believed this talk, and they said, "He betrayed his friend for pieces of silver, and it serves him right that he hanged himself.
15. "He has taken a blood-guilt upon himself and so from now on the field of the potter shall be known as the Field of Blood."