John 12:4-6

“ Then one of his disciples, Judas, the son of Simon, the Iscariot, he who was soon to betray him, says: 5. Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred denarii and the price given to the poor? 6. Now this he said, not that he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief, and kept the purse and took what was put therein. ”

This outbreak of indignation on the part of Judas is occasioned by the mean passion with which the evangelist charges him; but, like his treachery, it has a deeper source than avarice. For a long time (John 6:70) there had been in this heart a gloomy discontent with respect to the course followed by Jesus (John 6:70-71; comp. with John 12:15), and this feeling only waited for a pretext to manifest itself. In the Synoptics, it is the disciples (Matthew), some (Mark), who protest. It seems that on this occasion, as on others, Judas played among his fellowdisciples the part of the leaven which leavens the whole mass. Westcott says: “He expressed what the others thought.”

There is no doubt more than this: he excited among them a movement of discontent which would not have been awakened without him. We find here again a relation between John and the Synoptics which we have already pointed out in other stories. In the latter, the outlines are effaced: the former alone reproduces the characteristic features, as we might expect from a witness. Judas knows the exact price of the commodity in question, as if he were a tradesman. For the value of the denarius, see on John 6:7. The sum indicated was nearly equivalent, in the time of the emperors, to two hundred and sixty francs. It is found as identically the same sum in Mark. We have already remarked several similar coincidences between the two evangelists (John 12:3; John 6:7; John 6:10). Even independently of the subsequent fact of the treachery of Judas, attested by the four evangelists, it would be very rash to ascribe the accusation here formulated by John against Judas to a feeling of personal hatred, as modern criticism has allowed itself to do. The word γλωσσόκομον (properly γλωσσοκομεῖον) denotes literally the case in which musicians kept the mouth-pieces of flutes; whence: box. This purse was probably a small portable cash-box. The property of Jesus and His disciples was mingled with that of the poor (John 13:29). This fund was supplied by voluntary gifts (John 12:5; Luke 8:1-3). We may see in John 20:15 how in the word βαστάζειν, the sense of bearing, the only one used, in general, in the New Testament, is easily changed into that of taking away, purloining (de Wette, Meyer).

The simple meaning to bear is not impossible, however, if, with the Alexandrian authorities, we read ἕχων, having, instead of καί... εἶχε., and he had...and....For by this means all tautology as between this clause and the following disappears. But it is absurd, in any case, to claim that the sense of taking away is excluded because of the article τά before βαλλόμενα, as if this article must signify that he took away everything which was placed in the box! It has been asked why Jesus, if He knew Judas, intrusted to him this office so perilous to his morality. We will not say, with Hengstenberg, that Jesus saw fit thus to call forth the manifestation of his sin, as the only means of accomplishing a cure. By such a course of action, Jesus would have put Himself, as it seems to us, in the place of God more completely than was accordant with the reality of His humanity. But is there clear proof that Jesus intervened directly in the choice of Judas as the treasurer of the company? Might not this have been an arrangement which the disciples had made among themselves and in which Jesus had not desired to mingle. Weiss thinks that Jesus had chosen Judas at first because he had a special gift in the financial sphere, and that afterwards He did not wish to interfere with a relation in which He recognized a divine dispensation.