Acts 1:18-20 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

This man purchased a field with the reward of iniquity That is, a field was purchased therewith: for that reward, being restored by him to the chief priests, had been paid by them for the purchase of a field, which, in some sense, he might be said to have purchased, having supplied the money that paid for it. See note on Matthew 27:3-10, where the next clause also, namely, his falling headlong, and bursting asunder, (in consequence, probably, of the rope breaking wherewith he hanged himself,) so that his bowels gushed out, is explained at large. It is justly observed by Dr. Doddridge, that an action is sometimes said in Scripture to be done by a person who was the occasion of doing it. See Genesis 42:38; Exodus 23:8; Romans 14:15; 1Co 7:16; 1 Timothy 4:16. And it was known to all the dwellers at Jerusalem The fact was public and notorious, and, the circumstance being extraordinary, it was so much noticed as to become the subject of general conversation; insomuch as that field Which was so purchased; is called in their proper tongue, (Chaldaio-Syriac,) Aceldama, the field of blood As being bought with money which was, in more senses than one, the price of blood; having been the cursed hire for which Judas sold the blood of his Master, and, in effect, his own. We must either suppose that Luke added the expression, that is, the field of blood, to the words of Peter, for the use of Theophilus and other readers who did not understand the language of Palestine, or that the whole verse is to be considered as Luke's words, and to be read in a parenthesis. It may not be improper to observe here, that Aringhius (in his Romans Subterran., p. 436) mentions a funeral inscription dug up in the Via Nomentana, in Italy, by which it appears that the fate of Judas became a proverbial form of cursing. For it is written in the book of Psalms See note on Acts 1:16.