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Messianic Prophecies

Zechariah 11:12-13

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Zechariah 11:12-13

I said to them, “If you think it best, give me my wages; and if not, keep them.” So they weighed for my wages thirty pieces of silver. Yahweh said to me, “Throw it to the potter, the handsome price that I was valued at by them!” I took the thirty pieces of silver, and threw them to the potter, in Yahweh’s house.

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So I fed the flock of slaughter, especially the oppressed of the flock. I took for myself two staffs. The one I called “Favor”, and the other I called “Union”, and I fed the flock. I cut off the three shepherds in one month; for my soul was weary of them, and their soul also loathed me. Then I said, “I will not feed you. That which dies, let it die; and that which is to be cut off, let it be cut off; and let those who are left eat each other’s flesh.” I took my staff Favor, and cut it apart, that I might break my covenant that I had made with all the peoples. It was broken in that day; and thus the poor of the flock that listened to me knew that it was Yahweh’s word. I said to them, “If you think it best, give me my wages; and if not, keep them.” So they weighed for my wages thirty pieces of silver. Yahweh said to me, “Throw it to the potter, the handsome price that I was valued at by them!” I took the thirty pieces of silver, and threw them to the potter, in Yahweh’s house. Then I cut apart my other staff, even Union, that I might break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel.

The counter-reading

How this passage is read within its own context.

The critical reading regards Matthew as having shaped the Judas-payment narrative to echo Zechariah, noting several divergences: in Zechariah the shepherd receives wages owed and himself disposes of them, whereas in Matthew the sum induces betrayal and the chief priests — not Judas — later buy a field. It highlights a text-critical crux (the MT reading "to the potter" versus the emended "treasury") bearing on how closely the potter's-field detail matches. It also stresses that Matthew 27:9 attributes the quotation to Jeremiah though the wage language is from Zechariah 11, taken as evidence the author worked from memory or a testimony collection, possibly conflating Zechariah with Jeremiah's potter imagery (Jeremiah 18-19).

The fulfillment reading

How this passage is read as pointing to the Messiah.

The fulfillment reading treats Zechariah 11:12-13 — where the shepherd's wages are weighed out as thirty pieces of silver, a sum the prophet dismisses with heavy sarcasm as the supposedly grand price at which he was valued, and then flung into the temple to the potter — as a strikingly specific anticipation of Judas' payment of thirty silver pieces to betray Jesus (Matthew 26:14-15) and its later disposal on a potter's field (Matthew 27:3-10). Supporters emphasize the convergence of the exact amount, the rejection motif, and the potter/field detail, and note that Matthew makes the correspondence explicit with a formula citation (27:9-10). The precision of the sum and its temple-related disposition are held to be too specific for coincidence.

How the New Testament uses this passage

Each entry names how the New Testament author draws on the passage — a direct quotation, an allusion, an echo, or a typological reading. An echo or an allusion is not the same as a prediction; the label says which is which.

  • Matthew 26:14-15 Allusion

    Matthew 26:14-15's thirty pieces of silver verbally alludes to Zechariah 11:12; the explicit formula quotation comes later at Matthew 27:9-10 (misattributed to Jeremiah), so the cited locus itself is allusive rather than a direct citation.