In response to Wilhelm Schmitt's article that replied to "alleged difficulties in Matthew 27:9-10" (September/October, pp. 2-3), I will use his section numbers when referring to his article.
Anyone can look up a few Hebrew/ Greek words in Strong's concordance and make it seem as if he is an expert. I previously asked someone (a former roommate) who knows nothing about the Bible or Hebrew to write an article quoting from Strong's to make it seem as if he knew what he was talking about. The result was a very professional sounding document, which made no sense at all.
Since I know Hebrew fluently, I know the following to be true: Strong compiled his concordance under the assumption that the Bible in general and the KJV in particular were true and contained no mistakes. Strong's method was this: If the KJV says that a certain Hebrew word has a certain meaning, it must have that meaning somewhere, somehow, so he listed that KJV meaning, whether or not the translation had any linguistic accuracy. He did not do a linguistic study of the word in question, nor did he alter any of the words in the KJV. He did not even resort to the supposed cross-referencing with the Septuagint, which most modern Christians claim to rely on. What he did was make a sort of biblical thesaurus, not a dictionary or a critique. Strong actually claimed that certain Hebrew words had meanings that they do not have in any manner whatsoever. Strong's source document was the KJV and not the Masoretic text, so Strong is a very faulty and unscholarly work.
(1) The Hebrew word for field is sadeh, not shadah, as Schmitt claimed. It doesn't appear in Zechariah 11, because, just as in so many other cases, the gospel writer of Matthew, when misquoting, was forcing a Messianic meaning into an Old Testament verse that wasn't even originally a prophecy.
(2) Schmitt claims that eder hayekar (translated "a goodly price [or value]" in the KJV "signifies sufficiency." Where does he get this? Literally, eder hayekar means"the mightiness [of] the price/value." The context of the phrase in the surrounding verses signifies that the meaning of the verse is an obvious sarcasm. In the previous verse, Zechariah had asked his employers whether or not he was going to be paid. When his payment of 30 pieces of silver was weighed out to him, he sarcastically declared the 30 pieces of silver as eder hayekar asher yakarti mealeihem ("the mightiness of the price [or value] at which I was priced/valued [in Hebrew the same word is used in a verb form] by them"). Schmitt claimed that the verse did not in any way indicate that the "amount was paltry or that the offer of it was in any way an insult." The opposite is true! The very fact that Zechariah immediately threw the money away shows unarguably that the verse was meant in sarcasm and that the 30 pieces did not in any way "meet with his approval."
(4) The Hebrew word in question is hasomrim (the keepers/they who keep), not shamar as Schmitt stated. Shamar is the root (to keep), so Schmitt is not totally incorrect, but, nevertheless, he did not use the correct conjugation. This is because Strong's does not list an exact word-for-word translation but rather lists the verb root. In so doing, he often chose the wrong root to list.
True, "to keep" doesn't connote anything negative, but what's the point? Schmitt is conceding that what Matthew claims is in Jeremiah is not in Jeremiah. He is also admitting that there is a similar verse in Zechariah that seems as if it may have been the source for Matthew's "prophecy." In spite of all this, he is stubbornly claiming that if Matthew said that the verse about the field existed and was spoken of by Jeremiah, then it cannot be derived from this verse in Zechariah. So now he is trying to "prove" that Zechariah 11:13 is not the verse that Matthew referred to and, therefore, brings up the possibility that Matthew was referring to a verse that exists/existed somewhere but doesn't exist anymore. He overlooks the fact that the New Testament repeatedly tries to "prove" from the scriptures that Jesus Christ was the Messiah. What purpose would it serve to quote a nonexistent verse that no one had heard of? Schmitt also overlooks the fact that there are many other similarly misquoted verses. Which is more probable and likely? That the gospel writers lied and twisted the meaning of verses, made mistakes, or that the Bible is a perfect jewel of a book, unlike any other book in the world, and that Wilhelm Schmitt knows all the answers and the creator of Andromeda and every other galaxy and star in this and any other universe?
(5) See #2 above to see the context in which va'ashlich, "I cast/threw," was used. The context in no way shows it to be "in a good sense," as Schmitt claimed. Also, how do you throw something away in a good sense? Especially money? The fact that he threw instead of "gave" or "handed" the money definitely shows that the connotations were negative.
(6) In ancient Hebrew, yotgser, which the KJV translates as "potter" (actually "former/creator/fashioner"), also meant "treasurer," In this sense, it is derived from the Hebrew otsar, which means "treasury" instead of from yatsar, which means "to form." The phrase used in Zechariah is beit hayotser, which literally means "the house of the treasurer." This is a very common Hebrew construction of a house for public use. For example, beit haknesset (house of the assembly) is the word for "synagogue"; beit hasefer (house of the book) is the word for "school"; beit hakise (house of the chair) or beit hashimush (house of use) are two Hebrew terms for bathroom. Also, it is obvious from the context that Zechariah was referring to a treasury because (1) there is no such service as "potter" in the temple, (2) there is such a service as treasurer, since money is involved in the running of any institution, (3) since it is money that was given to the institution, is it more probable that the money was given to a nonexistent potter or to an obviously existent treasurer?
Schmitt used the word yatser instead of yotser, the actual word used in Zechariah. Why? Because this is what Strong did! I don't know whether Strong did this purposely to bypass the fact that what was spoken of was a treasury, or whether it was an honest mistake. Nevertheless, Schmitt's use of Strong's yatsar (root of "to form"; the root for treasury is atsar) shows that all that Schmitt did was flip through a Strong's concordance and nothing else.
(7) Who cares what the Septuagint says? The Septuagint is just another translation and is renowned for being a bad one. The only reason its existence is in any way seemingly relevant in modern theology is because most early Christians did not know Hebrew but did know Greek. Otherwise, it would be nothing more than another old document. The language of the Jews was Hebrew, not Greek, and the language of the Old Testament was Hebrew, not Greek. That's just the way it is.
(Yoel Wasserman, P. O. Box 998, Aspen, CO 81612; e-mail core@rof.net)
