Today’s exchange rate (approximately) for thirty pieces of silver is $21.62. (Thirty Pieces of Silver – Truth Magazine)
“The didrachma and tetradrachma (actually stater) are references to silver coins from the city of Tyre, used in the business of the Temple. The staters were equal to shekels, and because the Jews were forbidden to issue their own silver coins, they were forced to use coins from this merchant city. Ironically, the coins bore the image of Israel’s old nemesis, Baal. Money-changers were on hand to render service, changing foreign currency into these Tyrian coins for a percentage. Judas was paid with thirty staters” (source: The Interactive Bible).
Inherent within our own self-perceived constructs of good and evil, the analogy of smelting metal to form coins, nails and a spear transforms instead of purity, the tools to commit murder. The process, an ancient one, where all impurities, by being held over intense heat, making the metal itself formable and cleansed. Our souls were unable to do the same until the brutal murder of Jesus Christ.
For underlying those thirty pieces of silver, was the price paid for the lowest of slaves. Those worth only for the most back breaking work and their cheap cost, insured easy replacement. Thus, as the shift in perception changes, every lash, scourging, thorns and nails our malignant impurities were exposed onto the body of the Son of God.
The view of His life reduced in man’s eyes in a rapid motion as little consequence, the redemption giving leave to the call for mockery in derision for life beyond death. Their notion and belief of the political threat, overturning the governing power was swept away as a mere sale of a slave of the lowest order. The result, the exchange for Barabbas became the effortless choice from the faith of a carpenter fulfilling the Old Testament. With those thirty pieces of silver betraying the Cup, we became part of and caught in our own capability and capacity to embrace evil, the most poignant and pronounced in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
Though purifying metals for the greater good and evil therein, we by the detachment of demanding immunity, paid little heed to the consequences of our culpability to murder. We annihilated the conscience to reprieve ourselves of foul deeds done in full conscious. The separation from the soul eases the quickening to the Devil’s dance and the gleeful choice negating the responsibility for life, bought the smooth talk, unaware of the quicksand on the next footstep.
He absorbed the full extent of the foul and despicable to present to ourselves the ease in which we condone its tenets. Though we pay little heed to our own endorsement for murder, the reprieve was granted even in the death we demanded as our right to do so. For we return our ill-gotten behaviors in free will, irreparable choices condemning the open narrow path given in the blood of the covenant.
Yet the reach was to us to find our courage in our self-demand perdition and to pull ourselves out by the eternal strength in the thread of eternal hope, the gift we throw back in His face. Yet within our shroud of culpability, a flicker of light rouses the fragile and still whisper in our seeming futility of seeing in a far off memory the remembrance of the nobility and integrity housed in virtue. Sight unblended sees not the molding of flour and water, but the slaughtered lamb fighting again to reclaim our damaged souls. In this we struggle up on feeble and disused feet seeking to find that the peace I give you is the certainty of faith.
9 thoughts on “Bought and Sold for $21.62”
Ann, thank you for sharing from your heart….The third paragraph gives me “goose bumps” when I read it.
This is pretty much nonsense. How large a field do you think you could buy for $21.62? Not enough to bury one man, let alone a bunch of foreigners.
We are talking about the year 33AD. It bought a lot in that timeframe.
That’s basically my point; this was a pretty hefty bribe Judas was asking for. On the other hand, the relative value of goods today is wildly different from what it was then. We don’t think anything of salt and black pepper, but these were expensive items back then. On the other hand, an acre of land is probably much more expensive to us, given our larger population, than it was to them. It is ludicrous to try to express the value in 33 A.D. of thirty pieces of silver in terms of a currency that didn’t exist and the value of which is based solely on the “full faith and trust” of a national government that didn’t exist.
I see your point, but currency values aside, I believe that the author was trying to convey what little worth was put on Jesus’ life since the 30 pieces of coinage was the minimum amount that a slave/servant could be sold for during that time, but what a giant price he paid for our redemption.
That would have been just as true if the price Judas had asked had been 30 thousand talents of gold.
You write so beautifully, your words dance on my tongue. I can’t help but think of abortion’s devastation when I read, “The separation from the soul eases the quickening of the devil’s dance and the gleeful choice negating the responsibility for life, bought the smooth talk, unaware of the quicksand on the next footstep.” Lies of the pro-choice/murder crowd duped so many women with the smooth talk. Murder of the innocents obtained only with the separation of their souls. Thank you for a wonderful essay. It’s a keeper.
Murder of the innocents? But this was not murder? Exodus 12:29 “At midnight the LORD struck down all the firstborn in Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on the throne, to the firstborn of the prisoner, who was in the dungeon, and the firstborn of all the livestock as well.”
My comments were an anology to aborted babies, that I, in my opinion, couldn’t help but think of as I read this outstanding essay.