In Matthew, Judas goes to the high priests and establishes a reward of thirty pieces of silver for handing Jesus over to them.  The precipitating event for this seems to be an unnamed woman anointing Jesus with expensive perfumes in Matthew 26:1-13.  Matthew 26:14-16 then reads:

[14] Then one of the twelve went, who was called Judas Iscariot, to the high priests he [15] said: What do you wish to give to me, and I will will betray him to you? And they set for him thirty pieces of silver. [16] And from then he was seeking a favorable time so that he could betray him.

Compare this to the parallel passage in Mark 10:10-11:

[10] And Judas Iscariot who is one of the twelve departed to the high priests so he could betray him to them. [11] And they, hearing, rejoiced and promised to give him silver. And he was seeking how he would favorably hand him over.

Luke’s version in 22:3-6 reads:

[3]But the slanderer entered into Judas who is called Iscariot, who was numbered among the twelve; [4] And departing he spoke with the high priests and officers for how to betray him. [5] And they rejoiced and offered to give him silver. [6] And he fully agreed, and he was seeking a favorable time to betray him to them apart from the crowds.

Obviously Matthew diverges from the other Gospels here with the specificity of the reward’s value, and in 27:3-10, which occurs after Jesus has been captured by the high priests, Matthew reads:

[3] Then when Judas who betrays him sees that he would be condemned, repenting he returned the thirty pieces of silver to the high priest and the elders [4] saying, I sinned betraying blameless blood. But they said, what is this to us? You will see to it. [5] And flinging the silver into the nave he withdrew, and departing he hung himself. [6] But the high priests taking the silver said: it is not permitted to cast these into the treasury, since it is a blood price. [7] And taking counsel they purchased with them the field of potters for the burial of foreigners. [8] Therefore this field is called the field of blood until this day. [9] Then the words of Jeremiah the prophet were fulfilled, which say: “I took the thirty pieces of silver, the price having been awarded which they paid from the sons of Israel, [10] And they gave these unto the field of potters, in accordance with the commands to me of the lord.

In the above citation, direct quotes from Zechariah have been italicized.  If you will recall, we have previously examined Zechariah 11:12-13, which reads in the NRSV as:

[12] Then I said to them, “If it seems right to you, give me my wages; but if not, keep them.” So they weighed out my wages as thirty shekels of silver. [13] Then the LORD said to me, “Throw it into the treasury” – this lordly price at which I was valued by them. So I took the thirty shekels of silver and threw them into the treasury in the house of the LORD.

I have italicized the word “treasury” here because the NRSV has an annotation describing their translation choices here, wherein they have relied on a Syriac manuscript to augment Hebrew text, which reads “to the potter.” It would seem that Matthew is relying on this Hebrew text tradition of Zechariah (or possibly a version of Jeremiah that incorporates this passage from Zechariah, since the citation is attributed to Jeremiah). 

So here we see that not only has Matthew seemingly changed the text from its source material to better align it with Zechariah, but there is some evidence as to which version of the text of Zechariah we should rely upon for interpretation.  But the interpretation itself is not necessarily straightforward. It is unclear who exactly Matthew views as the bad shepherd.  Is it Jesus, for whose life the 30 pieces of silver was paid? Is it Judas the betrayer?  Is it the high priests and elders, who are the ones who ultimately are placing the silver into the field of potters?  

Within Zechariah itself, it seems to make sense to read the passage as symbolically recounting the Babylonian exile, and framing it as a punishment for the predations of the rich at the expense of the welfare of God’s flock.  I think that Matthew is reframing this understanding and applying it to the sack of Jerusalem.  It seems most plausibly to view the bad shepherds in this interpretations as Judas and the religious authorities, if only because it seems hard to apply Zechariah 11:15-16 to Jesus (NRSV text below):

[15] Then the LORD said to me: Take once more the implements of a worthless shepherd. [16] For I am now raising up in the land a shepherd who does not care for the perishing, or seek the wandering, or heal the maimed, or nourish the healthy, but devours the flesh of the fat ones, tearing off even their hoofs.

As we have seen in  other posts, after the promised destruction of Zechariah 11, subsequent chapters turn their attention to God’s return and the utopian reestablishment of his kingdom on earth.  We will consider this further soon, but based on our examination so far, the major conclusions that I am drawing about Zechariah in Matthew are:

• It is being used to make the fall of Jerusalem intelligible, and to tie early Christian experience to the corpus of Hebrew Scripture
• It is also being used to justify the early Christian expectation for the return of Christ and the establishment of God’s Kingdom in the future.