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Matthew may have shaped Judas’s death to follow a pattern based on Ahithophel in 2 Samuel. Ahithophel betrays King David, similar to how Judas betrays Jesus, and when their plans fail both men end their lives by hanging, described with similar language.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
LXX 2 Samuel 17:23
Septuagint
21 And it happened after they were gone, that they came up out of the pit, and went on their way; and reported to king David, and said to David, Arise and go quickly over the water, for thus has Ahithophel counseled concerning you. 22 And David rose up and all the people with him, and they passed over Jordan till the morning light; there was not one missing who did not pass over Jordan. 23 And Ahithophel saw that his counsel was not followed, and he saddled his donkey, and rose and departed to his house into his city; and he gave orders to his household, and hanged himself, and died, and was buried in the tomb of his father.
Date: 100–1 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Matthew 27:5
New Testament
2 They tied him up, led him away, and handed him over to Pilate the governor. 3 Now when Judas, who had betrayed him, saw that Jesus had been condemned, he regretted what he had done and returned the 30 silver coins to the chief priests and the elders, 4 saying, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood!” But they said, “What is that to us? You take care of it yourself!” 5 So Judas threw the silver coins into the temple and left. Then he went out and hanged himself. 6 The chief priests took the silver and said, “It is not lawful to put this into the temple treasury, since it is blood money.” 7 After consulting together they bought the Potter’s Field with it, as a burial place for foreigners.
Date: 70–90 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... The parallels between Jesus and David are given greater depth in relation to those between Judas and Ahithophel. I have made the case, as did Origen, that the one “who rose against David was Ahithophel” just as the one who “rose against the Savior was Judas the traitor.” Specifically, Judas implemented Ahithophel's cunning plan for betraying David in betraying David’s son Jesus. But, for Matthew, Judas could not perform Ahithophel's plan without also performing his own demise. The parallels between the two characters end with dark finality ... There is much to commend the connection: the verbal form is identical in both stories, appears only in these two instances in the Greek Bible, and Ahithophel and Judas are the only characters in the entirety of the Bible to hang themselves. Thus, Matthew’s unique account of Judas’s suicide ties together all of the strands of the Ahithophel typology: Judas's life ends where Ahithophel's did ..."
Nathan C. Johnson, “The Passion according to David: Matthew’s Arrest Narrative, the Absalom Revolt, and Militant Messianism,” CBQ 80.2 (2018): 247–272.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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