Matthew’s account of the trial of Jesus has a detail of special significance: “Then Judas… when he sow that he was condemned, repented himself…” This word “saw” must surely mean that Judas was present at the trial, and saw with his own eyes all that took place. It is true that a secondary meaning is possible: that he gathered or understood that Jesus was condemned. But even this would require that Judas had spent those hours in close proximity to the Council. The word “then” supports this conclusion.
Either way, this seems to be psychologically all wrong. The natural inclination of such a traitor would be to remove himself as far as possible from the scene of his evil work as soon as the money had been paid over. The explanation which best harmonizes with the other details of the trial is that the thirty pieces of silver were only a token payment. The rest of the bribe, the main part of it, was to be for Judas’s help in the role of chief witness for the prosecution. The reason why the Jewish leaders found their case against Jesus so inadequate, and liable to collapse altogether, is best explained by the traitor’s last-minute refusal to go through with this part of the deal.
If this hypothesis is correct—and it explains so much that is otherwise rather odd about the trial—then the interesting problem arises: What brought about this change in Judas? And to this the best answer available appears to be that the witness Jesus gave about himself at the trial (Matthew 26:61,64) brought a sudden flood of understanding into the mind of Judas, so that all at once he realised that Jesus as the sanctuary of God would be “destroyed” and “raised again”, that he would sit as God’s right hand, and that he would come again in judgment. Such a realisation suddenly illuminating his mind must have brought into the soul of this wretched man a misery past description.
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Author: Harry Whittaker
Keywords: Judas, Judas Iscariot, remorse, Judas' remorse, thirty pieces of silver, Judas' suicide
Bible reference(s): Matt. 27:3-10
Source: Studies in the Gospels.
Page indexed by: inWORD Bible Software.