The Fate of the Betrayer

News of the Sanhedrin’s sentencing of Jesus Christ to death no doubt sent a shudder through all Jerusalem, and perhaps even through some of His enemies; but it produced its strongest effect on the one man from whom, in this case, sensitivity could least have been expected—on Judas! As though by some miracle the betrayer’s thoughts and feelings changed. The most violent and tormenting repentance filled his whole soul and so took hold of him that, not knowing what to do, he resolved on the boldest of acts—to go to the chief priests, return the ruinous silver, and publicly testify that he had sinned grievously — «I have betrayed innocent blood!» It was hard to hope that this act (however moving in itself) would touch the hearts of the judges, Jesus’s enemies; but the disciple-betrayer wished, at least, to ease somewhat the unbearable burden of sin crushing his soul. The chief priests received Judas’s repentance and his testimony to Jesus’s innocence with the contemptuous coldness of men who, pretending to be occupied only with the execution of the law, have no time to attend to the outbursts of a fanciful sensitivity. Not one of them was willing to argue with Judas over his Teacher’s innocence (least of all acknowledged by Jesus’s personal enemies), yet not one of them undertook to pour a drop of oil on the betrayer’s torn heart. «What is that to us—they answered—see to it yourself! You have sinned (if indeed you have sinned)—it is you who must answer for it!» So coldly did their lips speak, though their hearts seethed with anger against Judas for his public repentance and testimony concerning Jesus, which, serving to justify the Condemned, were at the same time an unbearable rebuke to His unrighteous judges.

Stung by the priests’ rebuke, the poor betrayer indeed turned his whole gaze upon himself—but the gaze of despair, before which death appears so quickly, and seems so welcome!.. In a tumult of feeling he flings the silver he had received into the temple, hastens to a lonely place, and there, on a tree, strangles the bodily life in himself, having long since strangled the life of his spirit. But this terrible scene, begun by the hand of despair, is continued, as if deliberately, by the finger of avenging Providence: the hanging body falls headlong from the tree, its belly bursts open from the fall, and the entrails spill out (Act 1:18)…

The chief priests, according to St. Matthew’s testimony, refused to put Judas’s silver into the temple treasury: the law forbade receiving unclean money into the temple (Deut 22:18)—and this was the price of blood! Instead, by common counsel, a potter’s empty field outside the city was later bought, for the burial of strangers—perhaps even of Jews who, coming in crowds to the holy city, often ended their earthly course there—but more, it seems, of Gentiles, for whom, as unclean in the Jews’ estimation, a separate burial place was thought fitting. The voice of the people, in which the voice of God is so often expressed, soon gave this graveyard its fitting name: Akeldama, that is, the Field of Blood.

In this way, as the evangelist notes, the ancient predictions of the prophets concerning the betrayer and the fruits of his betrayal were fulfilled: the thirty pieces of silver were taken as «the price of the precious one, on whom a price was set by the sons of Israel», and given for the potter’s field, just as the Lord had long ago revealed to His faithful servants (Zah 11:12-13).

There was fulfilled too, St. Peter observes, the word of David concerning the one who, «eating bread, lifted up his heel» (Act 1:20; Ps 73:26); his homestead was left desolate—turned into a silent dwelling of the dead! In the environs of Jerusalem the traces of the Field of Blood are shown even now.

But who can trace the lines of the wretched schemer’s character and life, or mark out the true nature of the son of perdition? Who can penetrate the mystery of his person and his betrayal? — A figure, at first glance, terrible and at the same time mysterious, standing in some peculiar, striking contrast to the adorable Person of the Son of Man! The Cainites, of course, were grievously mistaken in venerating Judas for his betrayal, as though he alone among the apostles had been granted insight into the mystery of mankind’s salvation through the death of the Son of God; but he too would depart from the truth who wished to see in the whole past life of the fallen apostle nothing but darkness and crime. The contrary is already vouched for by his nearly four years spent with Jesus amid trials and temptations (Lk 22:28), at a time when many were forsaking Him (Jn 6:65-67). Such constancy does not fall to everyone’s lot. His violent repentance for sin, his public confession of it in the temple, and his solemn testimony to the innocence of the already-condemned Jesus—which exposed Judas to many grave and unpleasant consequences—likewise bear loud witness that conscience still lived in the betrayer’s soul, that his hand knew not only how to receive silver but how to fling it down. All this, and much else, led even the Fathers of the Church to think that Judas’s soul was not a stranger to many good sentiments; which is why he had been received among the apostles and numbered with the Twelve. But at the same time, in Iscariot’s soul lay the seed of the ruinous passion of avarice—that, as St. Paul observes, «root of all evils» (1Tim 6:10). Both sides of his character—the praiseworthy and the blameworthy alike—could equally have disposed him to follow Jesus. Where else, if not in His holy company, if not in His divine discourses, was there food for every good thought and feeling? At whose side, if not at His—the Messiah, the King of the whole world—did it seem easier to satisfy one’s thirst for money as well? And so Iscariot came to be numbered among Jesus’s disciples, and counted with the Twelve. It cannot be that Jesus, who chose His apostles after a night spent in prayer, in communion with the Father, did not know that He was choosing His own betrayer. «He knew from the beginning who it was that would betray Him»,—and yet He chose him! He chose him, that the Scripture might be fulfilled: «that not one of them was lost, but the son of perdition» (Jn 17:12). Had he not been chosen, Iscariot would, of course, not have carried out his betrayal in this particular form, but he might have carried it out in a thousand other forms: for the Son of God, the hypostatic Truth and Good, is betrayed every time we wickedly turn away from truth and virtue. On the contrary, the deadly sickness with which Iscariot’s soul was infected could nowhere have found a swifter or more direct cure than in Jesus’s holy company, had the wretched man wished to restore the health of his own soul! In this respect, Judas’s inclusion among the disciples was, for him, the greatest of mercies…

The constant, immediate nearness of Iscariot to Jesus had, by the very nature of the human heart, to bring about one of two things: either to crush the passion of avarice entirely out of Judas’s heart and make him wholly pure, like the rest of the disciples; or else to breed in him a secret, gradually growing weariness of Jesus’s holy company, driving him, in his flight from a light that shone so brightly before his eyes and lit up all his steps, to sink more and more into his own darkness, and to give himself over wholly to his passion. Unhappily, it was the latter that came to pass in Judas, in its full force, by his own will. While the other disciples, on entering Jesus’s holy company, left behind, so to speak, their own life, and from day to day began to live more and more the divine life of their Teacher and Lord, Judas remained with his own ruinous self-sufficiency. In his mind the darkness of unbelief persisted; in his heart lay the untouched ice of self-love; he went on living his own impure life, opposed to the life of the Teacher. At the center of this opposition was his passion for money, so contrary to the spirit of poverty and self-denial of the Son of Man. The purse Iscariot carried became an ark of the covenant for the money-lover, out of which Satan sent him his own revelations: the whole realm of darkness turned upon this soul, finding in it a refuge and a supposed stronghold against Him who came to destroy «the works of the devil» (1Jn 3:8). While the Son of Man ascended from one labor to another, the wretched son of perdition sank from one deceit to another, from one betrayal of trust to another. All this evil so deeply rooted itself in Judas’s soul that it had to remain a secret of his own conscience: outwardly he was an apostle, like the rest.

The Teacher, without doubt, employed every means to heal His ailing disciple. Witness to this is the Last Supper. How many moving and forceful hints toward repentance! In John’s Gospel other traces remain, too, of Jesus’s particular attention to the state of Judas’s soul (Jn 6:70). But because the feelings of a heart occupied by passion were shut up within it, all that was good remained on its surface—was not taken in, and could not turn into strength and spiritual life. The touch—the lightest and most friendly—of the healing hand upon the wound produced only an inward shudder and pain.

Tormented by his passion, Iscariot too, perhaps, more than once thought of leaving Jesus, as others did (Jn 6:66). But invisible bonds still held him until the appointed time; an inner voice still spoke strongly for the Teacher. And his very passion, not yet wholly despairing of seeing Jesus as the Messiah, could speak in favor of remaining with Him too. Judas—however hard it was to keep forcing himself, again and again—forced himself, and stayed!..

The recent events, which had roused in the other disciples too an expectation of their Teacher’s approaching enthronement (Lk 19:11), had to shake Judas’s whole soul with hope and fear. «Now—thought Judas—no later than now, His fate must be decided—or at least, mine! It is time to think decisively about what is to become of me.» What, then, did the money-lover hear from the Teacher through all these last days? Frequent predictions of His coming sufferings—and not one word of His kingdom or of earthly rewards for His disciples! «The chief priests and Pharisees are gathering to confer, taking every measure, condemning us to death, while we wander here and there with nothing to do, spending our days and nights over nothing at all… A fine company—but it is not for Judas, who must have something to live on. I am not theirs, and they are not mine! Let each go his own way!» «But could you not draw—the demon whispered to the money-lover—one last profit from your nearly four years spent with these people? The Sanhedrin sets great store by knowing where Jesus can be found: why not turn this demand to your own advantage?.. Pointing out where He is will do the Teacher no great harm, and will serve you well. Will the guards even dare to lay hands on Jesus! It would not be the first time they returned from Him empty-handed. Even if they were to seize Him, during the feast, fearing the people, they would not dare do Him any real harm; the matter will end in something unimportant—most likely, Jesus’s banishment to Galilee; and you can win a reward as a patriot, and distinguish yourself in the eyes of the Pharisees, which may prove very useful for your future…»

The infernal thought is accepted—and the disciple-betrayer is now wholly possessed by Satan! Do not look now for logic in his actions—that would be to look for order in hell. Let Caiaphas promise him no more than thirty pieces of silver—this silver will seem to him like mountains of gold. To break free as quickly as possible from a paradise turned prison, to finish, to finish the matter—that is what Judas’s soul wants, and the devil living within it!..

But the matter is finished! The Teacher is in the hands of the scribes! With unbelievable haste they manage, in the course of the night, to hold two sessions, hear the false witnesses, pronounce the sentence, hand the Condemned over to Pilate for crucifixion… News of all these events rings out in Judas’s soul like claps of thunder. Having given birth to his betrayal, having carried out Satan’s prompting, the betrayer’s soul became, as it were, idle, and thereby open to the sense of a forgotten duty. What a terrible voice now sounds in this wasteland! Everything good, forgotten for a time, rises again in a thousand forms, crowds into his heart, oppresses it, tears it apart. Judas sees one thing, hears one thing: the death of the Teacher! For him there is no more shame, no more secret; every calculation, the very passion itself, vanished like a hellish phantom: only conscience remained, with its torments! The friendly sympathy, in this state, of some priest, some human being, might perhaps have stopped a soul on the verge of falling into hell. Everything depended on a few minutes. But what does the self-condemned betrayer hear? «See to it yourself»—they say to him with contempt. «Oh, I see well enough—he thinks in despair—what a monster like me deserves: an eye for an eye, blood for blood—so the law itself says»—and the first tree serves him as the instrument of his own execution.

After this, a hundredfold now it held true that «it would have been better for him had he not been born» — this terribly unhappy «man»!

But someone will say: «’If it was written that Christ must suffer this, why does he blame Judas? For it was the Scriptures that brought it about.’ But it was not by that will, but by his own wickedness. And if you will not examine his own will in the matter, then you will free the devil too from blame for sin. But this is not so—no, it is not so. For both this man and that one are worthy of countless torments, even though the whole world was saved. For it was not Judas’s betrayal that accomplished our salvation, but Christ’s wisdom and the riches of His skill, which turned the wickedness of others to our profit. You will say: ‘Even if Judas had not betrayed Him, would not another have betrayed Him?’ And what does this prove? ‘That if Christ had to be crucified, it had to be through someone; and if you say through someone, then it had to be through a man of just such a kind—for if all had been good, the dispensation for us would not have come to pass.’ God forbid; for the All-Wise Himself knew how to arrange what is profitable for us, even had this not come to pass; for His wisdom is abundant and beyond understanding. Let no one, therefore, suppose that Judas was a minister of the dispensation, and thereby excuse him» (Chrysostom, Homily 18 on Matthew.)