---
title: "Judas Iscariot"
category: "theology"
description: "The apostle who is last in every list: what his name probably means, what the money box reveals, and how to handle the two accounts of his death honestly."
tags: ["apostles", "person/judas-iscariot", "betrayal", "matthew", "john", "acts", "status/investigation"]
draft: false
primary_passage: "John 12:1-8; Matthew 26:14-16"
bible_references: ["Matthew 10:4", "Mark 3:19", "Luke 6:16", "John 6:70-71", "John 13:21-30", "Matthew 27:3-10", "Acts 1:15-20", "Zechariah 11:12-13", "Psalm 41:9"]
date_created: 2026-08-08
date_modified: 2026-10-09
ai_provider_models:
  - anthropic/claude-opus-5
  - anthropic/claude-opus-5.5
---

# Judas Iscariot

He is named last in every list that contains him, and every list that names him says why. He was
chosen with the others, sent out with the others, given authority over unclean spirits with the
others. He is the reason the apostolic band had to be reconstituted before Pentecost.

## Key Takeaways

*(This section follows the [Key Takeaways](https://the-way.lewy.au/about/key-takeaways/) format — see that page for what each part is for.)*

### Lessons about Jesus

Jesus knew. "Did I not choose you, the twelve? And yet one of you is a devil" (John 6:70) is said
roughly a year before the betrayal. He washed Judas' feet, seated him at the table, handed him the
morsel, and called him friend in the garden.

### Memory verse

> ✝️ John 12:6 (ESV)
>
> 6 He said this, not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief, and having charge of the moneybag he used to help himself to what was put into it.

### Be transformed

Judas' collapse was slow. John describes a settled habit (he *used to* help himself)
running underneath a public reputation for caring about the poor. The betrayal was the visible end
of something private that had been true for a long time. Examine the gap between what you are known
for and what you actually do when nobody is auditing.

### Prayer

Lord, it is a fearful thing that a man could be this close to you for three years and be lost.
Search us. Where we are managing an appearance while something rots underneath, expose it now while
there is still time to repent, and keep us from the despair that could not believe you would
forgive. In Jesus' name. Amen.

---

## The name

**Judas**: <span lang="grc">Ἰούδας</span> (*Ioudas*, ee-oo-DAHSS, G2455), from
<span dir="rtl">יְהוּדָה</span> (*Yehudah*, yeh-hoo-DAH, H3063), "praised" (Genesis 29:35). It was among the
most common Jewish names of the period, and honourable: the name of a patriarch, a tribe, and Judas
Maccabeus. Two of the Twelve carried it, which is why John has to specify "Judas (not Iscariot)"
elsewhere (John 14:22).

**Iscariot**: <span lang="grc">Ἰσκαριώτης</span> (*Iskariōtēs*, G2469). The derivation is **disputed**. The two main proposals:

1. **"Man of Kerioth"**: Hebrew <span dir="rtl">אִישׁ קְרִיּוֹת</span> *ish-Qeriyot*, a town in
   southern Judah (Joshua 15:25). Strong's takes this reading. If correct, Judas would be the only Judean among the Twelve.
2. **A link to the *sicarii***, the dagger-men of the later revolt, from Latin *sicarius*. This is
   chronologically awkward: the *sicarii* are attested as an organised group after Judas' lifetime.
   It is the weaker of the two.

The first is more probable. Neither is certain, and the "only non-Galilean" point rests on an
uncertain etymology, so it is a possibility.

## What Scripture records

**He held the money.** John states it twice (John 12:6; 13:29), and the first time with an explanation that removes
any ambiguity. At Bethany, when Mary anoints Jesus with costly ointment, Judas objects that it
should have been sold and the proceeds given to the poor: three hundred denarii, close to a year's
wages. John's comment is blunt (John 12:6, quoted above): the objection was cover for theft, and the
theft was habitual.

**He arranged the price.**

> ✝️ Matthew 26:14-16 (ESV)
>
> 14 Then one of the twelve, whose name was Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests 15 and said, "What will you give me if I deliver him over to you?" And they paid him thirty pieces of silver. 16 And from that moment he sought an opportunity to betray him.

Thirty pieces of silver is the compensation set in Exodus 21:32 for a slave gored by an ox: the
price of a slave, and the valuation the chief priests placed on Jesus. It is also the sum weighed
out as wages and thrown "to the potter" in Zechariah 11:12-13.

Matthew draws on that potter imagery when the priests use the returned money to buy the potter's
field (Matthew 27:7), but there is a difficulty in how he cites it: Matthew introduces the quotation as "spoken by the prophet **Jeremiah**"
(Matthew 27:9), while the wording that follows corresponds most closely to Zechariah 11:12-13.
Proposed explanations include a composite citation naming the more prominent prophet (Jeremiah has
his own potter and field material at Jeremiah 18-19 and 32), or a reference to a scroll grouping the
prophets under Jeremiah's name. None is certain. The text reads *Jeremiah*.

**He was identified and left.** At the supper Jesus names the betrayer by handing him the morsel;
"then after he had taken the morsel, Satan entered into him" (John 13:27). Jesus says, "What you are
going to do, do quickly." John adds four words: "And it was
night" (John 13:30).

## The two accounts of his death

Matthew and Acts describe the end differently.

> ✝️ Matthew 27:3-5 (ESV)
>
> 3 Then when Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he changed his mind and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, 4 saying, "I have sinned by betraying innocent blood." They said, "What is that to us? See to it yourself." 5 And throwing down the pieces of silver into the temple, he departed, and he went and hanged himself.

> ✝️ Acts 1:18-19 (ESV)
>
> 18 (Now this man acquired a field with the reward of his wickedness, and falling headlong he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out. 19 And it became known to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the field was called in their own language Akeldama, that is, Field of Blood.)

Two differences: the manner of death (hanging / a fall), and who bought the field (the priests, in
Matthew 27:7 / Judas, in Acts).

The usual reconciliation is that the two describe different stages of one event (a hanging followed
by the body falling), and that Acts speaks of Judas "acquiring" the field in the sense that it was
bought with his money, which is how Matthew describes the priests using it. Both are
reasonable readings, and neither is stated in the text; they are harmonisations. The accounts
emphasise different things and are not obviously irreconcilable.

Matthew's word for Judas' response: he "changed his mind":
<span lang="grc">μεταμέλομαι</span> (*metamelomai*, G3338), regret or remorse. Matthew does not use
<span lang="grc">μετανοέω</span> (*metanoeō*, G3340), the ordinary New Testament word for repentance. How much the word choice
carries is contested: Matthew uses the same verb of the son who "changed his mind and went"
(Matthew 21:29, ESV), a turn the parable commends. He
felt the weight of it, said the true thing ("I have sinned by betraying innocent blood"), said it to
the wrong people, and did not go back to Jesus. Peter denied and returned; Judas regretted and did
not.

## Chosen, and responsible

Both are asserted, and the New Testament does not soften either. Jesus chose him knowingly (John
6:70-71) and the betrayal is presented as the fulfilment of Scripture (John 13:18, citing Psalm
41:9). At the same time Judas is treated throughout as fully responsible: he negotiated, he sought
the opportunity, he was a thief before he was a traitor.

Attempts to resolve this by making Judas a mere instrument, or by making the foreknowledge
conditional, both cut something the text plainly says. The passage that holds them together most
tightly is Jesus' own: "The Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the
Son of Man is betrayed!" (Matthew 26:24).

## Takeaway

Judas heard every sermon, saw every miracle, was sent out with authority, and had his feet washed by
the Son of God on the last night. Proximity was not the same as belonging. That is the warning, and
it is aimed at people who are already inside the room.

## References

Scripture quotations marked ESV are from the English Standard Version (Crossway). Etymology from
*Strong's Greek Dictionary* (public domain), G2455 and G2469 — the latter giving "inhabitant of
Kerioth" while noting the derivation is probable rather than certain — with *Strong's Hebrew
Dictionary* H3063, H377 and H7149. The replacement of Judas and the apostolic qualification in
Acts 1:21-22 are treated in [The Twelve: Disciples and Apostles](https://the-way.lewy.au/biblical-figures/twelve-apostles/).