Who Purchased the Potter's Field

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 25, 1866

Who Purchased the Potter's Field.

Matt. xxvii, 7, 8. And they [the priests] took counsel, and bought with them the potter's field to bury strangers in. Wherefore that field was called, The field of blood, unto this day.

Acts i, 18, 19. Now this man [Judas] purchased a field with the reward of iniquity; and falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out. And it was known unto all the dwellers at Jerusalem; inasmuch as that field is called, in their proper tongue, Aceldama, that is to say, The field of blood.

ACELDAMA, field of blood, a small field south of Jerusalem, which the priests purchased with the thirty pieces of silver that Judas had received as the price of our Saviour's blood. Matt. xxvii, 8; Acts i, 19. Pretending that it was not lawful to appropriate this money to sacred uses, because it was the price of blood, they purchased with it the so-called potter's field, to be a burying place for strangers. Judas is said, Acts i, 18, to have purchased the field, because it was bought with his money. Tradition points out this field on the steep side of the hill of Evil Counsel overhanging the valley of Hinnom on the south. It appears to have been used, since the time of the crusaders, as a sepulchre for pilgrims, and subsequently by the Armenians. At present it is not thus used.