John 12:4-6
Not that he cared for the poor
He objects to the ointment on economic grounds and John corrects the record. The bag he carried was the mechanism, not the motive alone.
People of the Bible
Judas Iscariot
Kept the bag for three years, sold the whole thing for a slave’s price, and could not live with the change in his hand.
Judas is in every list of the twelve and every list adds the same clause, who also betrayed him, so the reader never meets him without knowing. He held the common purse, and John says plainly that he was a thief and carried away what was put in it. That detail matters because it makes the betrayal a long slope rather than a single night. He is present for everything the others saw, sent out with the same authority, and given his feet to wash at the last supper.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Judas Iscariot
- 01
- 02
Matthew 26:14-16
What will you give me
He goes to the chief priests and opens with a price. From that hour he sought opportunity, which means the next several days are spent waiting.
- 03
John 13:21-30
He went immediately out, and it was night
The sop is given to him at the table. John ends the scene with three words of weather that are not about weather.
- 04
Luke 22:47-48
Betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss
The sign agreed with the soldiers is the ordinary greeting of a friend, and the question put to him names exactly what is being used.
- 05
Matthew 27:3-5
I have sinned in that I have betrayed innocent blood
He repents, returns the silver and gets nothing back from the men who paid him. The money buys a field for burying strangers.
Why it matters
Thirty pieces of silver was the compensation set in Exodus for a slave gored by an ox, and Matthew quotes Zechariah about a goodly price. The betrayal itself is carried out with a kiss and a word of address, hail master, which is the most efficient horror in the gospels. Then the money comes back. He brings it to the priests, says he has sinned in betraying innocent blood, and they answer see thou to that. Remorse was not the missing piece.
21 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
Matthew 26:47-75; Mark 14:43-72; Luke 22:47-62; John 18:1-27
Before the Cock Crow
Matthew 26:1-16; Mark 14:1-11; John 12:1-8
The Fragrance and the Silver
Matthew 26:17-35; Mark 14:12-31; Luke 22:7-38; John 13-17
This Do in Remembrance
Matthew 27:57-66; Mark 15:42-47; Luke 23:50-56; John 19:38-42
A Stone at the Door
Matthew 27:1-31; Mark 15:1-20; Luke 22:63-23:25; John 18:28-19:16
Behold the Man
Matthew 27:32-56; Mark 15:21-41; Luke 23:26-49; John 19:16-37
It Is Finished
