by Giuseppe Monno
Zechariah 11:12–13
“Then I said to them, ‘If it seems right to you, give me my wages; if not, then keep them.’ So they weighed out my wages, thirty shekels of silver. But the Lord said to me, ‘Throw it into the treasury, this handsome sum at which they have priced me!’ So I took the thirty shekels of silver and threw them into the treasury in the House of the Lord.”
Matthew 26:14–16
“Then one of the Twelve, the man called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, ‘What are you prepared to give me if I hand him over to you?’ They paid him thirty silver pieces, and from then onwards he began to look for an opportunity to betray him.”
Matthew 27:3–10
Seized with remorse, Judas returned the thirty silver pieces to the chief priests; after consulting together, they used the money to buy the potter’s field, “as the Lord had directed me.”
The connection between these texts is unmistakable. In Zechariah, it is the Lord himself who declares that he has been priced at thirty shekels of silver. In the Gospel, that same sum becomes the price of Christ’s betrayal.
This is no coincidence, but a clear case of prophetic fulfilment: what is said of God in the Old Testament is realised in the New Testament in the person of Jesus Christ.
In the New World Translation, the passage in Zechariah is explicitly attributed to Jehovah. Yet in the New Testament, Jehovah’s Witnesses deny that Jesus Christ is God.
This gives rise to a tension that is hard to resolve: in Zechariah, it is God himself who is priced at thirty shekels of silver; in the Gospel, it is Christ who is sold for that very sum.
Who, then, is the one being valued?
If one denies that Jesus is God, the parallel remains without an adequate explanation. But if one accepts the revelation of the New Testament, everything falls into place: in Christ, what God had foretold is brought to fulfilment.
The evangelist Matthew is not merely recounting a historical episode, but presenting an event that fulfils the Scriptures. The sum of thirty silver pieces—already established in Exodus 21:32 as the value of a slave—becomes a sign of rejection and contempt.
In Jesus, God himself enters into history and accepts to be priced, rejected, and handed over.
The Catholic faith does not claim that Jesus is the Father, but that he is the eternal Son, consubstantial with the Father. Distinct as a Person, he shares fully and indivisibly the same divine nature.
For this reason, the New Testament can apply to Christ what the Old Testament says of God—not as a contradiction, but as the unfolding continuity of divine revelation.
Jesus is Emmanuel, “God-with-us” (cf. Matthew 1:23): in him, it is God himself who is betrayed and sold.
The correspondence between Zechariah 11:12–13 and the Passion narrative is not accidental, but reveals a profound truth: the one who is priced at thirty silver pieces is not merely a man, but the eternal Son of God.
To deny this identification is to fail to account for the unity of Scripture. To recognise it, however, leads to the very heart of the Christian faith: in Jesus Christ, it is God himself who gives himself over and is handed over for the salvation of the world.