Matthew 27:6

The original Koine Greek, according to Westcott and Hort, reads:

οἱ δὲ ἀρχιερεῖς λαβόντες τὰ ἀργύρια εἶπαν οὐκ ἔξεστιν

βαλεῖν αὐτὰ εἰς τὸν κορβανᾶν ἐπεὶ τιμὴ αἵματός ἐστιν

In the King James Version of the Bible it is translated as:

And the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful

for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood.

The modern World English Bible translates the passage as:

The chief priests took the pieces of silver, and said, "It’s not lawful

to put them into the treasury, since it is the price of blood."

For a collection of other versions see BibleHub Matthew 27:6

Unlike Judas at 27:4, the priests do not acknowledge that was "innocent blood" that the money paid for, but their actions do convey that they are aware the betrayal of Jesus was a treacherous act.^[1] This verse builds upon the theme that Jesus is innocent, and that in the Gospel of Matthew the Jewish leaders are condemning him despite also knowing his innocence. In John Calvin's commentary on Matthew he reads gross hypocrisy in the priests worrying about the impurity of the coins while conspiring to execute Jesus.^[2]

At 27:3 it was the priests and elders whom Judas was interacting with. This verse only mentions the "chief priests" this may be connected to the problem of the coins being in the temple, and those a matter for the religious leaders to resolve.^[3] It could also be linked to the specific mention of the Temple sanctuary in the previous verse, and indicate that the coins are in an area of the temple that only priests are permitted.^[4]

The law being referenced is usually taken to be Deuteronomy 23:18 (19), which specifically references the money earned from prostitution as detested by God and thus ineligible for use in the Temple, but is extrapolated to any unclean money.^[5][3][6] John Nolland disagrees, arguing that Rabbinic sources show no such interpretations of Deuteronomy.^[7]

The word κορβαναν, (korbanas), translated as treasury, appears very rarely in sources from the period. It is used nowhere else in the New Testament. Unusually in Matthew, the term seems to be a borrowing from Hebrew. Derived from the word korban.^[6] It appears in Josephus, who also uses it to refer to the Temple treasury.^[8]