Acts 1:18

It seems best to treat this verse and the following, which break the connexion of St Peter's remarks on David's prophecies, as no part of the Apostle's speech on the election of Matthias. St Luke most likely derived the words from St Peter, from whom he no doubt gathered the facts for this part of his history, and the Apostle would thus at a later time emphasize to St Luke, by a minute description, the ruin which came upon Judas, though in his public address he had only spoken in the words of the Psalmist.

These two verses (18 and 19) are connected in themselves by the copulative conjunction, but the particles which introduce Acts 1:18 (μὲν οὗν) express no more than a confirmation of the statement in which they occur, and a transition to some explanatory matter. They are frequently employed in a similar manner by the writer of the Acts (as Acts 5:41; Acts 13:4; Acts 17:30; Acts 23:22; Acts 26:9). But that which stamps the passage as a parenthesis is the demonstrative pronoun which stands at the head of it. The position of the Greek words would be represented by This man you are to knowacquired, &c. If it had been a continuous narrative we should have had some connection of the following kind: "He had obtained part of this ministry, and yet he with the reward of his iniquity, &c." without the insertion of any demonstrative, or indeed of any pronoun at all, in the Greek.

Now this man purchased a field Rather, acquired, which probably was the sense intended by the A. V., as it was an old sense of the English word purchase. This may be said not only of him who buys, but of him who becomes the occasion of another's buying. The field was bought by the chief priests (Matthew 27:5-8) with the money which Judas returned, but as they could not take that money for the treasury, they were likely to look upon what was purchased with it as still the property of the traitor. St Luke's employment of the unusual word "acquire" in a narrative where he calls the price of the land "the reward of iniquity," and speaks of the immediate death of Judas, makes it clear that he views (and that the people of Jerusalem did the same) the field Akeldama as the field which Judas acquired, though it became, from the circumstances, a public possession for a burial ground.

the reward of iniquity This expression is only found in N. T. here and 2 Peter 2:13; 2 Peter 2:15. So that it seems to be a Petrine phrase. The A. V. conceals the identity of the Greek words in these three passages by giving them in each place a different English rendering.

and falling headlong, &c. This can only have occurred after the hangingmentioned by St Matthew (Matthew 27:5). It appears from St Luke's narrative here that the death of Judas, attended by all these dreadful circumstances, took place in the spot which the chief priests eventually purchased. This, if a fit place for an Eastern burying ground, would be of a rocky character where caves abounded or could easily be made, and it would be the more rugged, if, as St Matthew's narrative intimates, it had been used for the digging of clay for the potters. If in such a place the suicide first hanged himself and the cord which he used gave way, it is easy to understand how in the fall all the consequences described in this verse would be the result. For a similar result to bodies falling on rocks, cp. 2 Chronicles 25:12. Buxtorf (Rabb. Lex. s. v. סכר) suggests that the expression of St Matthew, "hanged himself," might be rendered "he was choked," as if by asphyxia, from over-excitement and anguish. He says the Jews have so explained the end of Ahithophel, and that a like explanation might suit in the Gospel. And St Chrysostom, Hom. xxii. ad Antiochenos, uses the expression to be strangled by conscience. But this view seems to be surrounded by far more difficulties than the belief that St Matthew merely mentioned one single incident in the suicide's fate, while St Luke, because his purpose seemed to ask it, has described the death of Judas in such wise as to shew that his destruction was as terrible as anything of which David had spoken in the Psalms to which St Peter had referred.