judas iscariot Summary and Overview

(Judas of Kerioth). He is sometimes called "the son of Simon," #Joh 6:71; 13:2,26| but more commonly ISCARIOTES. #Mt 10:4; Mr 3:19; Lu 6:16| etc. The name Iscariot has received many interpretations more of less conjectural. The most probable is from Ish Kerioth, i.e. "man of Kerioth," a town in the tribe of Judah. #Jos 15:25| Of the life of Judas before the appearance of his name in the lists of the apostles we know absolutely nothing. What that appearance implies, however, is that he had previously declared himself a disciple. He was drawn, as the others were, by the preaching of the Baptist, or his own Messianic hopes, or the "gracious words" of the new Teacher, to leave his former life, and to obey the call of the Prophet of Nazareth. The choice was not made, we must remember, without a provision of its issue. #Joh 6:64| The germs of the evil, in all likelihood, unfolded themselves gradually. The rules to which the twelve were subject in their first journey, #Mt 10:9,10| sheltered him from the temptation that would have been most dangerous to him. The new form of life, of which we find the first traces in #Lu 8:3| brought that temptation with it. As soon as the twelve were recognized as a body, travelling hither and thither with their Master, receiving money and other offerings, and redistributing what they received to the poor, it became necessary that some one should act as the steward and almoner of the small society, and this fell to Judas. #Joh 12:6; 13:29| The Galilean or Judean peasant found himself entrusted with larger sums of money than before, and with this there came covetousness, unfaithfulness, embezzlement. Several times he showed his tendency to avarice and selfishness. This, even under the best of influences, grew worse and worse, till he betrayed his Master for thirty pieces of silver. (Why was such a man chosen to be one of the twelve? -- (1) There was needed among the disciples, as in the Church now, a man of just such talents as Judas possessed, --the talent for managing business affairs. (2) Though he probably followed Christ at first from mixed motives, as did the other disciples, he had the opportunity of becoming a good and useful man. (3) It doubtless was included in God's plans that there should be thus a standing argument for the truth and honesty of the gospel; for if any wrong or trickery had been concealed, it would have been revealed by the traitor in self-defence. (4) Perhaps to teach the Church that God can bless and the gospel can succeed even though some bad men may creep into the fold. What was Judas' motive in betraying Christ? -- (1) Anger at the public rebuke given him by Christ at the supper in the house of Simon the leper. #Mt 26:6-14| (2) Avarice, covetousness, the thirty pieces of silver. #Joh 12:6| (3) The reaction of feeling in a bad soul against the Holy One whose words and character were a continual rebuke, and who knew the traitors heart. (4) A much larger covetousness, --an ambition to be the treasurer, not merely of a few poor disciples, but of a great and splendid temporal kingdom of the Messiah. He would hasten on the coming kingdom by compelling Jesus to defend himself. (5) Perhaps disappointment because Christ insisted on foretelling his death instead of receiving his kingdom. He began to fear that there was to be no kingdom, after all. (6) Perhaps, also, Judas "abandoned what seemed to him a failing cause, and hoped by his treachery to gain a position of honor and influence in the Pharisaic party." The end of Judas. -- (1) Judas, when he saw the results of his betrayal, "repented himself." #Mt 27:3-10| He saw his sin in a new light, and "his conscience bounded into fury." (2) He made ineffectual struggles to escape, by attempting to return the reward to the Pharisees, and when they would not receive it, he cast it down at their feet and left it. #Mt 27:5| But, (a) restitution of the silver did not undo the wrong; (b) it was restored in a wrong spirit, --a desire for relief rather than hatred of sin; (c) he confessed to the wrong party, or rather to those who should have been secondary, and who could not grand forgiveness; (d) "compunction is not conversion." (3) The money was used to buy a burial-field for poor strangers. #Mt 27:6-10| (4) Judas himself, in his despair, went out and hanged himself, #Mt 27:5| at Aceldama, on the southern slope of the valley of Hinnom, near Jerusalem, and in the act he fell down a precipice and was dashed into pieces. #Ac 1:18| "And he went to his own place." #Ac 1:25| "A guilty conscience must find neither hell or pardon." (5) Judas' repentance may be compared to that of Esau. #Ge 27:32-38; Heb 12:16,17| It is contrasted with that of Peter. Judas proved his repentance to be false by immediately committing another sin, suicide. Peter proved his to be true by serving the Lord faithfully ever after. --ED.)

Son of Simon (<430671> John 6:71; 13:2,26). Ish Kerioth, "the man of Kerioth," in Judah (<061525> Joshua 15:25), like Ish Tob," the man of Tob." This distinguishes him from the other Judas, also from the other eleven apostles who were of Galilee. He thus was connected with Judah his prototype who sold Joseph, and the Jews who delivered Jesus up to the Roman Gentiles. He obeyed the call of Jesus like the rest, probably influenced by John the Baptist's testimony and his own Messianic hopes. Sagacity in business and activity were the natural gifts which suggested the choice of him afterward as bearer of the common purse (<431206> John 12:6). He is placed last among the twelve because of his subsequent treachery; even previously he was in the group of four lowest in respect to zeal, faith, and love. The earliest recorded hint given by Christ of his badness is in <430664> John 6:64,70, a year before the crucifixion: "some of you ... believe not; for Jesus knew from the beginning who ... believed not, and who should betray Him"; "have I not chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil" (not merely" demon," the Greek always for the evil spirit possessing a body, but "devil," used only of Satan himself to whom Judas was now yielding himself). Yet even then repentance was not too late for Judas. Peter the foremost of the twelve had so shrunk from the cross as to be called "Satan," yet Peter recovered more than once afterward (<401623> Matthew 16:23). John, who had an instinctive repugnance to Judas, whose base selfish character was so opposite to John's own, delineates the successive stages in his fall. Jesus' many warnings against mammon love were calls to Judas while yet he had not made his fatal and final choice (<400619> Matthew 6:19-34; 13:22,23; <421611> Luke 16:11; <411025> Mark 10:25,26). Before that crisis Judas had salvation and even a high place of honour in Christ's future kingdom within his reach. Temptation fell in his way when larger contributions were made(<420803> Luke 8:3), part of which were spent for the necessities of Jesus and the disciples traveling about with Him, and the rest given to the poor. Hence Judas, being almoner, grudged the 300 pence worth of ointment lavished by Mary on Jesus, as money which ought to have come in to him, and led some of the other disciples to join in the cry. He had no care for the poor, but for self. Censoriousness and covetousness even to theft prompted his objection (<431205> John 12:5,6). Mary spent her all to do honour to Jesus' burial; Judas, grasping at all, betrayed Him to death and burial. Her love kindled no sympathetic spark in him towards the common Lord. Hope of larger gain alone kept him from apostasy a year before (<430664> John 6:64). Now the lost chance of the 300 pence (denarii), vindictiveness at Jesus'reproof (<431207> John 12:7,8), secret consciousness that Jesus saw through his baseness, above all the Lord's mention of His "burying" which dispelled his ambitious hopes of sharing a Messianic kingdom of power and wealth, drove him to his last desperate shift to clutch at 30 pieces of silver, the paltry price of a slave (<022132> Exodus 21:32; <381112> Zechariah 11:12,13; <502007> Philippians 2:7), and betray his Lord. The title "the son of perdition," given by Jesus in His high priestly prayer (<431712> John 17:12) to Judas and to none else but "the man of sin" (<530203> 2 Thessalonians 2:3), as doomed and essentially belonging to perdition, also Christ's declaration, "woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! it had been good for that man if he had not been born" (<402624> Matthew 26:24), oppose the notion that Judas betrayed Christ mainly in order to force Him to declare tits true nature and kingdom, that Judas might occupy the foremost place in it. The narrative gives little ground for this clever theory; rather, covetousness wrought in him unchecked spite and malignity, possibly not unmixed with carnal expectations from Messiah's kingdom, until, in the face of light, he yielded himself up to be Satan's tool, so that he received his sentence before the last day. Prophecy fore-uttered his doom (<19A904> Psalm 109:4-8). "Satan" was the "wicked" one "set over" Judas, first causing him to murder Christ, then himself. In <440116> Acts 1:16-20,25, Peter says, "this Scripture must needs have been fulfilled which the Holy Spirit by the month of David spoke before concerning Judas ... he obtained part of this ministry ... from which by transgression he fell, that he might go to his own place"(compare <233033> Isaiah 30:33). Ahithophel, his type, combined shrewd sagacity with intimate knowledge of David, which he turned against David, giving the hellish counsel to incest and parricide (<101512> 2 Samuel 15:12; 16:23; 17:1-3,23; compare<194109> Psalm 41:9; 55:13). So Judas in relation to Christ, knowing His favourite haunt for prayer, Gethsemane. Suicide was the end of Judas as of the type. Even Judas shared in Christ's washing of the disciples' feet, and Jesus said "ye are clean, but not all" (<431310> John 13:10). Troubled in spirit at Judas' presence, He said at the last supper, "verily, verily ... one of you shall betray Me" (cf. <431321> John 13:21); "exceeding sorrowful they began every one to say, Lord, is it I?" Judas asked the same lest his silence should betray guilt, and received the whispered reply in the affirmative (<402622> Matthew 26:22,25). Meantime John next, Jesus on one side, as Judas was on the other, leaned back so as to be on Jesus' bosom, and at Peter's suggestion asked secretly "who is it?" (<431323> John 13:23 ff) He answered "he it is to whom I shall give a sop when I have dipped it." Then He gave the sop to Judas, an act of love (dipping a morsel of unleavened bread in the broth of bitter herbs and handing it to a friend), but it only stirred up his hatred (<19A904> Psalm 109:4,5). So after the sop Satan entered Judas. Then said Jesus, "that thou doest do quickly." A paroxysm of mad devilishness hurried him on, as the swine of Gadara rushing into the deep. Jesus' awful words were enough to warn him back; but sin by willful resistance of light had now become a fixed law of his being. God gives him up to his own sin, and so to accomplish God's purpose; even as God did to Balaam (<042222> Numbers 22:22), and Jesus to the Pharisees (<402332> Matthew 23:32). Greek "what thou art doing (with full determination already being carried into action) do more quickly." The disciples thought, judging by Jesus' habit, though the fact is not elsewhere recorded except the allusion in <431205> John 12:5, that His direction to Judas was to give something to the poor. (See JESUS CHRIST , in proof that Judas too partook of the Lord's supper, a proof that <430654> John 6:54,56, cannot be understood of eating that supper, but of feeding on Him by living faith). Judas, having given a token beforehand, "whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is He, take Him and lead Him away safely"(<411444> Mark 14:44,45; <402648> Matthew 26:48), led the Roman band and priestly officers to apprehend Jesus in Gethsemane, and gave his studied, kiss, saying "Hail, Master!" or as Mark graphically represents his overdone show of deference, "Master, Master!" Jesus, as Judas approached, said, "Friend, wherefore art thou come?" and as Judas drew nigh to kiss Him, "Judas, betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss?" (<422247> Luke 22:47,48). When the Lord was condemned by the high priest and Sanhedrin, Judas probably being present, the reaction came; not that the condemnation took him by surprise, his confession shows he contemplated the result. His former Lord's love andrighteousness now remembered brought into his soul remorse (metameleia not repentance (metanoia ): <402703> Matthew 27:3,4. "I sinned in that I betrayed the innocent blood," he cried to the high priests, his tempters. "What is that to us? See thou to that," they sneeringly reply. Having served their end he is now cast aside as vile even in their eyes. Having forced his way into the sanctuary of the priests (naos he flung down the money, his bait to sin, now only hateful and tormenting to him (not as Alford, "speaking without and throwing the money into the naos "; for en too naoo , not eis ton naon , implies he was inside when he flung down the money), and departed and went and hanged (or strangled) himself. Acts 1:18 describes the sequel. He burst asunder when the suicide was half accomplished, and his bowels gushed out (even as he had laid aside bowels of compassion, <19A916> Psalm 109:16), his body lying ignominiously on the face, not on the back as the dead generally lie. He had designed, Gehazi like (<120526> 2 Kings 5:26), to provide a possession for himself and his, <440118> despairing of gain by Messiah, since he saw at last that His kingdom was not then a temporal one (<19A909> Psalm 109:9); but the only possession he purchased was a bloody burial place, Aceldama, which the priests bought with the price of blood, being characteristically too punctilious to put it into the treasury (<402324> Matthew 23:24). The potter's field was "to bury strangers in," fulfilling the foretold doom of Judas (<19A911> Psalm 109:11). The potter's clay, the emblem of God's sovereignty so as to give the reprobate to perdition, is first introduced by Jeremiah (<241911> Jeremiah 19:11), and so "Jeremy" is quoted as the original of <381112> Zechariah 11:12,13. (See ACELDAMA on the double reason for the name).