Paidion wrote:Then was fulfilled what had been spoken by the prophet Jeremiah, saying, “And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him on whom a price had been set by some of the sons of Israel, and they gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord directed me.” (Matthew 27: 9, 10)
Here is another example of an error. Nowhere will you find this quote in the book of Jeremiah.
I think there might be other ways of looking at this before concluding that this is an error
Craig Blomberg, in his contribution to "Commentary on the NT use of the OT" suggests that:
"Rabbis at times would create a composite quotation of more than one Scripture but refer to only one of the sources by name, often the more obscure one (though sometimes also the more important one) to ensure that others would pick up the reference... so there is no problem by the standards of the day for Matthew to refer to two texts like this and name only the more obscure prophetic source."
Then the question becomes, what Old Testament passages did Matthew see this as a fulfillment of?
Clearly Zechariah 11:12-13 is in mind. It has both the '30 pieces of silver' element and the 'potter' element. It seems to me that a good Jewish person would have easily recognized this reference.
But if there was also a minor reference to another old passage, that obviously wasn't as clear. If Matthew believed the passage fulfilled something from Jeremiah, he might have chosen to mention Jeremiah to alert careful students to investigate the possible reference.
Some have suggested Jeremiah 32:6-9 which has the element of the "Field" and the "Silver"
Others have suggested Jeremiah 19 which has the element of the "potter" and a closely connected context. According to Blomberg: "Jeremiah 19 offers a better cluster of images that Matthew may be citing, especially with its references to 'the blood of the innocents, the potter, the renaming of the place the Valley of Hinnom (the traditional site for the Potter's field), violence, and the judgment and burial of the Jewish leaders by God."
Blomberg concludes:
"The language of potter in Zechariah, the closer parallel to Matthew, undoubtedly brought to mind the more distant parallels in Jeremiah's texts that refer to potters- an example of the rabbinic practice of gezerah shavah, linking texts via common words."
