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CHAPTER LIV.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END.

"So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver."-ZECH. xi. 12.

It was inevitable that the burning words of indignation which Jesus had uttered on this last great day of His ministry should exasperate beyond all control the hatred and fury of the priestly party among the Jews. Not only had they been defeated and abashed in open encounter in the very scene of their highest dignity, and in the presence of their most devoted adherents; not only had they been forced to confess their ignorance of that very Scripture exegesis which was their recognised domain, and their incapacity to pronounce an opinion on a subject respecting which it was their professed duty to decide; but, after all this humiliation, He whom they despised as the young and ignorant Rabbi of NazarethHe who neglected their customs and discountenanced their traditions-He on whose words, to them so pernicious, the people hung in rapt attention-had suddenly turned upon them, within hearing of the very Hall of Meeting, and had pronounced upon them-upon them in the odour of their sanctity-upon them who were accustomed to breathe all their lives the incense of unbounded adulation—a woe so searching, so scathing, so memorably

intense, that none who heard it could forget it for evermore. It was time that this should end. Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians, Priests, Scribes, Elders, Annas the astute and tyrannous, Caiaphas the abject and servile, were all now aroused, and, dreading they knew not what outburst of religious anarchy, which would shake the very foundations of their system, they met together probably on that very evening in the Palace of Caiaphas,1 sinking all their own differences in a common inspiration of hatred against that long-promised Messiah in whom they only recognised a common enemy. It was an alliance for His destruction of fanaticism, unbelief, and worldliness; the rage of the bigoted, the contempt of the atheist, and the dislike of the utilitarian; and it seemed but too clear that from the revengeful hate of such a combination no earthly power was adequate to save.

Of the particulars of the meeting we know nothing; but the Evangelists record the two conclusions at which the high conspirators arrived the one a yet more decisive and emphatic renewal of the vote that He must, at all hazards, be put to death without delay; the other, that it must be done by subtilty, and not by violence, for fear of the multitude; and that, for the same reason -not because of the sacredness of the Feast-the murder must be postponed, until the conclusion of the Passover had caused the dispersion of the countless pilgrims to their own homes.

This meeting was held, in all probability, on the evening of Tuesday, while the passions which the events of that day had kindled were still raging with volcanic energy. So that, at the very moment while they were

1 The name Caiaphas-a surname of the High Priest Joseph-is only another form of Kephas, "a stone" (Salvador, Vie de Jésus, ii. 104).

OVERTURES OF JUDAS.

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deciding that during that Easter-tide our Passover should not be slain-at that very moment, seated on the slopes of Olivet, Jesus was foretelling to His disciples, with the calmest certainty, that He should be sacrificed on the very day on which, at evening, the lamb was sacrificed, and the Paschal feast began.

Accordingly, before the meeting was over, an event occurred which at once altered the conclusions of the council, and rendered possible the immediate capture of Jesus without the tumult which they dreaded. The eight days' respite from the bitter sentence of death, which their terror, not their mercy, had accorded Him, was to be withdrawn, and the secret blow was to be struck at once.

For before they separated a message reached them which shot a gleam of fierce joy into their hearts, while we may well imagine that it also filled them with something of surprise and awe. Conscious as they must have been in their inmost hearts how deep was the crime which they intended to commit, it must have almost startled them thus to find "the tempting opportunity at once meeting the guilty disposition," and the Evil Spirit making their way straight before their face. They were informed that the man who knew Jesus, who had been with Him, who had been His disciple-nay, more, one of the Twelve-was ready to put an immediate end to their perplexities, and to re-open with them the communication which he had already made.

The house of Caiaphas was probably in or near the Temple precincts. The gates both of the city and of the Temple were usually closed at sundown, but at the time. of this vast yearly gathering it was natural that the rules should have been a little relaxed for the general con

venience; and when Judas slank away from his brethren on that fatal evening he would rely on being admitted without difficulty within the city precincts, and into the presence of the assembled elders. He applied accordingly to the "captains" of the Temple, the members of the Levitical guard who had the care of the sacred buildings,1 and they at once announced his message, and brought him in person before the priests and rulers of the Jews. Some of the priests had already seen him at their previous meeting; others would doubtless recognise him. If Judas resembled the conception of him which tradition has handed down

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they could have hardly failed to notice the man of Kerioth as one of those who followed Jesus-perhaps to despise and to detest Him, as almost the only Jew among the Galilæan Apostles. And now they were to be leagued with him in wickedness. The fact that one who had lived with Jesus, who had heard all He had said and seen all He had donewas yet ready to betray Him-strengthened them in their purpose; the fact that they, the hierarchs and nobles, were ready not only to praise, but even to reward Judas for what he proposed to do, strengthened him in his dark and desperate design. As in water face

answereth to face, so did the heart of Judas and of the Jews become assimilated by the reflection of mutual sympathy. As iron sharpeneth iron, so did the blunt weapon of his brutal anger give fresh edge to their polished hate.

Whether the hideous demand for blood-money had 1 See 2 Chron. xxxv. 8; Acts iv. 1; v. 24.

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THE BLOOD-MONEY.

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come from him, or had been suggested by them; whether it was paid immediately or only after the arrest; whether the wretched and paltry sum given-thirty shekels, the price of the meanest slave-was the total reward, or only the earnest of a further and larger sum-these are questions which would throw a strong light on the character and motives of Judas, but to which the general language of the Evangelists enables us to give no certain answer. The details of the transaction were probably but little known. Neither Judas nor his venerable abettors had any cause to dwell on them with satisfaction. The Evangelists and the early Christians generally, when they speak of Judas, seem to be filled with a spirit of shuddering abhorrence too deep for words. Only one dark fact stood out before their imagination in all its horror, and that was that Judas was a traitor; that Judas had been one of the Twelve, and yet had sold his Lord. Probably he received the money, such as it was, at once. With the gloating eyes of that avarice which was his besetting sin, he might gaze on the silver coins, stamped (oh! strange irony of history) on one side with an olive branch, the symbol of peace, on the other with a censer, the type of prayer, and bearing on them the superscription, "Jerusalem the Holy."2 And probably if those

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1 About £3 16s. (Exod. xxi. 32; cf. Gen. xxxvii. 28; Zech. xi. 12, 13).; 2 In Matt. xxvi. 15, torno av avт seems to mean they paid," literally "weighed" (cf. LXX., Zech. xi. 12, 13). It cannot be rendered with the Vulgate, “constituerunt ei," which is used to harmonise it with Mark xiv. 11 (πnyyeíλavтo), and Luke xxii. 5 (ovvélevтo). In these matters, unimportant as regarded their purpose, the Evangelists do not profess a rigidly minute accuracy. I should infer, however, that Judas twice went before the priests-once to promise the betrayal, and another time to arrange its details. Perhaps the money had been promised on the first occasion, and paid on the second. St. Matthew only alludes vaguely to the words of Zechariah. The supposed relation between the two passages may be seen in Keil, Minor Prophets, ii. 373 (E. Tr.).

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