Acts 1:18,19

Acts 1:18-19. Some commentators have supposed these two verses to be an explanatory clause inserted by St. Luke, and do not consider them a part of St. Peter's speech. But the rhetorical style of these verses would seem to show that they are part of the original discourse.

The account here given of the death of Judas differs in some slight particulars from St. Matthew's story of the same event. The first difference is easily solved. In the Acts, St. Peter says Judas bought a field with the money paid for his betrayal of his Master. St. Matthew gives, no doubt, the exact account of the transaction when he tells us the field was purchased by the priests with the money Judas earned. This by no means contradicts the statement in the Acts, where Judas by a common figure of speech is said himself to buy the field which his money purchases.

The second discrepancy. The manner of the traitor's death is explained by the very probable suggestion that Judas hung himself from the branch of a tree on the edge of a precipice overhanging the valley of Hinnom; and that the rope breaking, he fell to the earth and was dashed to pieces. Dr. Hackett in his Commentary on this book gives an account of his visit to the supposed spot of Judas' death, and states how perfectly satisfied he felt with this explanation as being so entirely natural.

The third variation is the difference in the reasons assigned in the Acts and in St. Matthew's Gospel for the name ‘Aceldama' given to the field. St. Matthew states it was because the field was purchased with the price of blood; St. Luke (in the Acts), because of the traitor's violent death. There is nothing improbable in the hypothesis that both these reasons, one as much as the other, contributed to the awful title by which the field was afterwards known Aceldama, ‘the field of food.'