The Betrayal of Jesus Christ by Judas

We have seen that on earth, in the council of men, it was resolved not to take the life of the Prophet of Galilee before the end of the Passover feast; but in heaven, in the council of the Most High, it was resolved otherwise! The Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, had to be offered up at the very same time as the paschal lamb, which for so many centuries had served as His prefiguration (1 Cor 5:7), and no earthly power, no malice or cunning, could delay this sacrifice, or part the thing prefigured from its figure. Divine Providence, on the contrary, so arranged the course of events that the very men who, without knowing it, had set themselves against His eternal purposes, without knowing it turned suddenly to their fulfillment, resolving to act at once, to seize and put Jesus Christ to death at the very first convenient occasion. The cause of this unexpected change was one man, who, coming to the chief priests, declared that he, having long belonged to the number of Jesus’s disciples and constant companions, and therefore knowing all the secret places of His dwelling, could easily further their long-standing wish to seize Him secretly from the people (Lk 22:6), and was ready to use for that purpose all his own means and strength, if only the supreme authority would be pleased to look with favor upon so important a service—one that few were capable of, though all were bound to it, by virtue of the Sanhedrin’s recently issued decree (Jn 11:57). This wretched man did indeed belong to Jesus’s closest circle, and was that very disciple who, at the supper in Bethany, had feigned concern for the ointment and the poor, and against whose love of money the far-sighted John had long ago warned us (Jn 12:6); this was Judas Iscariot. We shall see later what drove him to so dreadful a betrayal of his Teacher and Lord; here let us only note that, holding the office of keeper of the money in Jesus’s small company, Iscariot could plausibly leave that company and absent himself on errands to the city for purchases; and so had the means to carry on his shameful negotiations with his Teacher’s enemies, and to bargain over His life, without being suspected of treachery by anyone.

The appearance of a man with such a proposal was, as the evangelists note (Lk 22:5), exceedingly welcome to Caiaphas. The crafty Sadducee at once calculated in his mind that, with the help of such a man as the betrayer showed himself to be, it would be possible to seize Jesus Christ without any disturbance, even without the people’s presence. By condemning Him to death at once and handing Him over into the hands of the Roman government, they hoped to guard themselves even against this last danger. The people, they thought, would not dare to attempt anything against the Romans, who especially strengthened their military posts in Jerusalem at Passover time; and even should they attempt something, the Sanhedrin would not be held answerable for it. That Jesus Christ would be betrayed by His own disciple held a particular value in the eyes of His personal enemies: for before a people unaware of the true reasons for His betrayal, this circumstance could be turned greatly to Jesus’s disadvantage, He who seemed, it would appear, so little valued by His own disciples. In the heat and blindness of fanaticism, the betrayer might seem, to some of those blindly «resting on the law» (Rom 2:17), a man righteous according to the law. That he would keep his word and not deceive the Sanhedrin as he had deceived his Teacher was vouched for—apart from other circumstances (Judas, no doubt, had taken care to secure their trust)—by his own extraordinary greed for money, which betrayed in him a baseness and blackness of soul ready for anything for the sake of gain.

At once the price of the betrayal is fixed—the very same price Moses commanded to be exacted for a slave, when he should be killed by someone unintentionally (Ex 21:32)—that is, thirty pieces of silver, or shekels, which in our money comes to about 60 rubles191. Some scribe’s wit, it would seem, wished to distinguish itself by pricing the life of Jesus Christ at the value of a slave—a value, no doubt, low enough even in the time of Moses, and now, two thousand years later, lower still. All the more astonishing, then, is the betrayer’s greed, which could be satisfied with so small a sum on such an occasion, when the enemies of Jesus Christ would, in all likelihood, not have grudged him any number of silver pieces192. But it can hardly be doubted that, had the deed succeeded, a larger sum had been promised, as the expressions of the evangelists Mark and Luke allow us to suppose (Mk 14:11; Lk 22:5)193. On the other hand, the betrayer would have been ashamed to insist stubbornly on a higher price, if he wished (as we must suppose) to give his treachery, in the eyes of the chief priests, the appearance of a lawful, patriotic act, and not to appear openly as a despicable betrayer haggling over his own conscience. Yet to act unreasonably, often against one’s own advantage, is the lot of those possessed by the passion for money: the small sometimes seems great to them, the great small, and, having always and in everything only money in view, they nonetheless, without knowing it themselves, sometimes show in their actions an appearance of disinterestedness. Neither the betrayer nor the chief priests could fix the time and manner of the betrayal with precision, though no doubt this would have been agreeable to both, and it seems they gave it no little thought (Mk 14:11). The betrayer undertook only to make use of the first convenient occasion—that is, whenever it should be possible to do this secretly from the people (Lk 22:6); while the chief priests promised to send him, at Judas’s first request, a sufficient number of servants and Temple guards to carry out his deed. The Passover night, being the most silent and therefore most convenient time, no doubt occurred to both of them as a thought; and if it was not now decisively chosen for carrying out the plan, it must have been because Judas did not yet know where the Teacher would spend that night, and perhaps did not yet know for certain whether He would now celebrate the Passover at the same time as everyone else194—that is, whether, on account of the great danger surrounding Him on every side, He might not put off this celebration (as the law itself permitted) until the following month.

Imagining how the wretched disciple returns by secret paths from Caiaphas’s palace to the holy company of Jesus, to play for a while longer the part of an apostle within it, and picturing, on the other hand, how hard it must have been, standing for so long in such immediate nearness to the Son of God, not to become good, not to receive from Him something of the Spirit of God—one cannot help but be struck with astonishment, and ask, together with the Church: «What manner of thing, O Judas, made you a betrayer of the Savior? Did He cut you off from the company of the apostles? Did He deprive you of the gift of healing? Did He, having supped with the others, drive you away from the table? O, how many blessings you forgot!»

The evangelists unanimously explain Judas’s betrayal as the prompting of Satan (Lk 22:3). Indeed, only Satan could have made an apostle into a betrayer and a son of perdition. But what good, someone might think, was it to him to teach Judas to betray his Teacher, when the Lord’s death, which followed after, utterly destroyed the works of the devil together with his kingdom? Does this not mean forging a weapon against himself, seeking his own ruin?.. So it is! But one must remember that the mystery of the redemption of the human race by the death of the Son of God was unknown to the spirit of darkness. Beneath the cover of this mystery, the Wisdom of God, mocking the schemes of the ancient enemy, brought it about that he himself, in this case, arranged his own ruin. He wished only to put an end to the effect—unbearable to him—of Jesus Christ’s preaching and wonders, just as he had brought the prophets to a martyr’s end, and had, not long before, sealed the mouth of John the Baptist by the hands of the wicked Herod; but in this case the result was quite the opposite: by the death of the Son of God, which cost the enemy of the human race such effort, a decisive blow was struck against him, and his dominion of sin and death was overthrown once and for all.

The evangelists, however, in pointing to Satan as the first author of Judas’s betrayal, do not neglect what are called secondary, or natural, causes. In particular, St. John points, so to speak, to the very opening (Jn 12:6) through which this ancient serpent crept into the wretched apostle’s soul and imperceptibly entangled his mind and heart. This was the passion for money, which, having taken root in his soul long before, had smoldered all the while he was with Jesus, feeding on the pilfering of the common funds, and now burst into a flame utterly infernal, in which, as in his own palace, Satan sat enthroned. Finally, Saints Matthew and Mark (Mt 26:1-16; Mk 14:3-11), deliberately bringing together two events separated in time—the supper at Bethany, at which Judas begrudged the ointment, and his betrayal that followed—let the discerning reader see how the devil fastened the final noose upon the money-lover’s soul, to drag him down with himself into hell. Stung to the quick by the loss of the gain he might have pilfered from the sale of the ointment, and perhaps wounded by the rebuke Jesus gave him on that occasion, the lover of money, in a fit of passion, resolved to make up his supposed loss by selling the Teacher Himself, who, by His own disinterestedness and poverty, had grown day by day more of a burden to him. «Fierce,—St. Chrysostom exclaims on this occasion—fierce a beast is the love of money; from it come grave-robbers, from it come murderers of their fellow men, from it come wars and battles, and whatever evil you might name, from it it comes.»

More the evangelists say nothing to explain Judas’s action, though certain aspects of it remain unclear; and we ought not be surprised at such silence, recalling how brief the evangelists generally are in describing the darkest of matters, and how hard it must have been for them to speak of so grave and irrevocable a fall on the part of their own companion. More astonishing still, as Chrysostom observes, is their self-renunciation, in that they «hide nothing of what might seem shameful to them. They might simply have said that a betrayer arose from among His disciples; but now they add that he was one of the Twelve—as if to say, one of the first company, one of those specially chosen, who had been with Peter and John. See how their concern was for one thing only, the truth alone, that they might hide nothing of what had come to pass» (Homily 80 on the Gospel of Matthew).

The unclear aspects of Judas’s betrayal are, then, the following: first, how could Judas, to use Chrysostom’s own words, «have hoped to hold Jesus fast, when he had many times seen Him pass through the midst of His enemies unheld, and had been given so many proofs of His divinity and power?» Second, in betraying his Teacher, did Judas regard Him as the Messiah, or at least as a great prophet and righteous man, or did he not? If he did regard Him so, how could he have betrayed Him? If he did not, whence came so great a repentance in him afterward? Since Jesus’s condemnation to death struck Judas so violently, it is clear that he did not expect that condemnation. What, then, did he expect? A voluntary acknowledgment of Him by the Sanhedrin as the Messiah? But this could not be supposed. A miraculous victory of Jesus over the chief priests? But in that case, with what face would the betrayer have appeared before the Betrayed?

Considerations of this kind led some teachers of the Church, even in ancient times, to the view that Judas neither wished for nor expected his Teacher’s death, supposing that He would find some means, natural or supernatural, to escape unharmed from the hands of His enemies195. In more recent times this view has been elaborated, developed, and applied to every detail of the event in the following way.

All the disciples of Jesus Christ expected to see in Him a King over Israel, and to be the first servants in that kingdom; but Judas, it is said, by his self-interested nature, was more concerned than any of the others with the success of his Teacher’s cause, and so watched constantly and closely the circumstances, the people’s opinions of Him, and the actions and designs of His enemies, and everything else. He now saw clearly that the Teacher’s dispute with the Sanhedrin had come to a decisive breaking point, and supposed that this breaking point must necessarily end in his Teacher’s favor, provided only it came during the feast, amid the great concourse of people so strongly disposed toward Jesus Christ. On the other hand, the wretched man saw with bitterness that the Teacher had no intention whatever of making use of the present, extremely favorable turn of circumstances. To his still greater grief, he learns afterward that the chief priests had unanimously formed a cunning plan to destroy Jesus for good only after the feast. «What is to be done? — thought the crafty lover of gain—if we let things go on as they are going, none of us will escape ruin: the last favorable occasion for us will be let slip; and Iscariot, as the least of criminals, may end up hanging on some cross.» «No,—whispered the devil—this shall not be: so long as Judas remains among these men, the chief priests will never get the upper hand of us. They have put off our destruction until the feast; the very opposite must now be done: the Sanhedrin has issued a decree that whoever learns where Jesus is should give notice of it (Jn 11:57). What more plausible pretext could there be? I will go to Caiaphas and offer to betray Jesus at the first convenient occasion: in this way, their blind malice will pay me, in the end, for their own destruction. Their own destruction, truly: I shall sell them their own death! What an uproar will seize the people, when they learn that the Messiah is in chains! What will they not do to overthrow the hated Sanhedrin and the detested praetorium! The Teacher, willing or not, will be made King of Israel, and to Iscariot will belong the honor of having been the first cause of so happy a turn of events. And so — «let us do evil, that good may come» (Rom 3:8). Let us take on, for a time, the dark face of a betrayer, so as afterward to be first among the apostles in the Messiah’s kingdom. Neither Peter nor John could have devised so fine a plan. The Teacher, who knows so well how to value men’s deeds, will not be slow to do justice to a scheme so deep and so successful.»

Thus, they say, ought Judas’s betrayal to be understood, because only on this supposition does it become intelligible how the betrayer could have been satisfied with so small a reward; the silver pieces were not the chief aim of the betrayal—he would have agreed to less. On this view, it is said, we also understand how Judas himself offered to lead the guard for the taking of Jesus, to greet Him with a friendly greeting, and even to kiss Him: an act which, otherwise, could only have been the result of some most repugnant personal malice toward the Teacher, of which, however, no trace is to be seen in Judas. It is understandable, finally, they say, why the news of the Teacher’s condemnation to death struck Iscariot so violently, and in such a direction: he must have grieved doubly on this occasion—both for the Teacher and for himself, having been so terribly deceived in his own calculations. Men of strong character, in such circumstances, usually turn to one desperate remedy: patet exitus (a way out is found). In carrying out his wicked and unhappy plan, they add, the betrayer could even, to quiet himself, lean on his Teacher’s magnanimous forbearance, by which the latter did not expose him before the other disciples, nor drive him from His company. Finally, the words «what you are going to do, do quickly» (Jn 13:27), they say, could have been taken by Judas as the Teacher’s decisive approval of his plan.

What must impartial history say of such conjectures? That these are guesses, going back, as we have noted, even to ancient times, approaching plausibility on some sides, but lacking any firm historical foundation, and at the same time badly undone by certain direct pointers of history to the very opposite of what is supposed. Indeed, whomever one listens to on this matter, one hears the contrary. Shall we accept the betrayer’s own confession? He says that he betrayed «innocent blood» (Mt 27:4); but not a word that it was not greed for money but the wish to see the Teacher enthroned all the sooner that drove him to the betrayal. On the contrary, the words «I have sinned, in that I have betrayed blood» (Mt 27:4) plainly show that the betrayal was a direct sale of that priceless blood. Shall we listen, as we ought, to the evangelists? They too say not a word of it—whereas pointing to such a cause and aim for the betrayal, easing the betrayer’s guilt, would also have eased their own grief, when the whole world learned of so base an act on the part of their former companion. Shall we turn with reverence to the testimony of the very Betrayed God-man Himself? What do we hear? «Woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed; it would have been good for that man if he had not been born» (Mt 26:24). Why so dreadful a condemnation, if the betrayal had so guileless an aim as is supposed? In that case it would closely resemble the so-called pious deceptions of the Middle Ages, and would not deserve so terrible a sentence. Anyone reflecting on the matter can easily find other reasons for holding to the plain narrative of the evangelists, which, leaving the details of the events in shadow, nonetheless sheds sufficient light on their substance. As for the difficulties noted above, they will, as we shall see (when we come to speak of the betrayer’s lamentable end), be resolved satisfactorily enough without any such conjectures.

Where did the Lord abide, and what did He do with His disciples, during the day of the betrayal? In St. Matthew’s Gospel, before the account of the betrayal, there is set down the narrative of the supper at Bethany and the ointment (Mt 26:6-16); but this narrative, in all likelihood, belongs to another time and is placed here on account of the inner connection between the events (Judas’s regret over the ointment and his betrayal); for in the Gospel of John the same supper is described, and set on the eve of Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem, to which it in fact belongs. Thus we have no direct Gospel account of that last day before the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Wednesday). Yet on careful comparison of the indirect indications, it becomes fairly clear that this day, like those before it, was spent not in Jerusalem, and therefore in Gethsemane (Lk 21:37) or in Bethany (Mk 14:13), in the house of Lazarus, which had already been, and now all the more remained, almost the only faithful refuge for the Son of Man.

The thought of the approaching Passover (Mt 26:17) must, no doubt, have occupied Jesus’s disciples above all else now, for it represented to a Jew not only the most sacred but also the most joyful time of life. The picture of the feast was, besides, adorned in their imagination with childlike hopes of rewards and honors in the Messiah’s kingdom, which had never left the disciples of Jesus, and which now, after so many momentous events, occupied their whole souls all the more powerfully. The zeal of their friends in Bethany, no doubt, spared no means to make Jesus Christ’s stay with them as peaceful and as comforting as possible. The hospitable Martha now had every opportunity to join her many-careful hospitality with the quiet and lofty devotion of her sister. But for her Divine Friend, if ever, then now, one thing alone was needful (Lk 10:40-42). We have seen that thoughts of death and burial occupied Jesus Christ’s mind even at the supper held in Bethany on the eve of His entry into Jerusalem; now, almost on the eve of His death, these thoughts must have grown still more vivid… How comforting it would have been to share them with someone! But there was no being on earth capable of it. There remained only to commune in prayer with the Father in heaven alone. And no doubt this communion, which had always served the God-man as a source of strength, peace, and inspiration, was now doubled and trebled.

The shameful agreement between Judas and the chief priests was known to his Teacher in every detail, but his fellow disciples had no knowledge of it whatever. The Lord deliberately concealed this from them until the last possible moment; otherwise, what might not Peter’s fiery zeal have allowed itself, to forestall so great a misfortune?

The betrayer’s position, during the last hours he spent with his Teacher and fellow disciples, must have been extremely constrained and pitiable. For all the hardening of his heart by passion, it could not but ache and be torn at the sight of the divine Teacher, betrayed by him in so shameful a manner, and at the sight of the holy company of his fellow disciples, which he was now leaving forever. Every meaningful glance, every word of any significance, must have thrown the betrayer into violent confusion, and painters do not depart from the truth when, depicting the Last Supper, they show him among the Apostles radiant with spiritual joy, with a face dark and dreadful. Could there have been any light on the face of one in whose heart Satan sat?