“And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter’s field, to bury strangers in.”
So they took counsel and bought with them the potter's field as a burial place for strangers. The potter's field purchased with the blood money: the council decision to buy the field for burying strangers is the practical use of the returned silver. The potter's field becomes the burial place for the strangers — the foreigners who died in Jerusalem without family nearby.
Church Fathers on Matthew 27:7
The Chief Priests knowing that they had purchased a murder were condemned by their own conscience; they said, 'It is the price of blood.'
Truly straining out the gnat, and swallowing the camel; for if they would not put the money into the treasury, because it was the price of blood, why did they shed the blood at all?
They thought it meet to spend upon the dead that money which was the price of blood. But as there are differences even in burial places, they used the price of Jesus' blood in the purchase of some potter’s field, where foreigners might be buried, not as they desired in the sepulchres of their fathers.
Read all 11 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain
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