Reference: Aceldama
American
Field of blood, a small field south of Jerusalem, which the priest purchased with the thirty pieces of silver that Judas had received as the price of our Savior's blood, Mt 27:8; Ac 1:19. Pretending that it was not lawful to appropriate this money to sacred uses, because it was the price of blood, they purchased with it the so-called potter's field, to be a burying-place for strangers. Judas is said, Ac 1:8, to have purchased the field, because it was bought with his money. Tradition points out this field on the steep side of the hill of Evil Counsel overhanging the valley of Hinnom on the south. It appears to have been used, since the time of he crusaders, as a sepulchre for pilgrims, and subsequently by the Armenians. At present it is not thus used.
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Easton
the name which the Jews gave in their proper tongue, i.e., in Aramaic, to the field which was purchased with the money which had been given to the betrayer of our Lord. The word means "field of blood." It was previously called "the potter's field" (Mt 27:7-8; Ac 1:19), and was appropriated as the burial-place for strangers. It lies on a narrow level terrace on the south face of the valley of Hinnom. Its modern name is Hak ed-damm.
Illustration: Aceldama
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Fausets
the field of blood. So called because it was bought with the price of blood, according to Mt 27:6-8; and because it was the scene of retribution in kind, the blood which Judas caused to be shed being avenged by his own blood, according to Ac 1:19; Re 16:6. The purchase of the field was begun by Judas, and was completed after Judas' death by the priests, who would not take the price of blood from Judas but used the pieces of silver to pay for the field. He did not pay the money (Mt 27:5), but had agreed to pay it, with a view of securing "a habitation" to himself and his wife and children (Ps 109:9; 69:25). Stung with remorse he brought again the 30 pieces of silver, went to the field, hanged himself, and, the cord breaking, his bowels gushed out.
Thus there is no discrepancy between Mt 27:8 and Ac 1:19. Substantial unity amidst circumstantial variety is the strongest mark of truth; for it. proves the absence of collusion in the writers. (Bengel.) Or probably Peter's words (Ac 1:18) are in irony. All he purchased with the reward of iniquity was the bloody field of his burial. What was bought with his money Peter speaks of as bought by him. The field originally belonged to a potter, and had become useless to him when its clay was exhausted. Jerome says it was still shown S. of mount Zion, where even now there is a bed of white clay. Matthew (Mt 27:9) quotes Jeremiah's prophecy as herein fulfilled. Zec 11:12-13 is the nearest approach to the quotation, but not verbatim. Probably Jer 18:1-2 and Jer 32:6-12 are the ultimate basis on which Zechariah's more detailed prophecy rests, and Jeremiah is therefore referred to by Matthew.
The field of blood is now shown on the steep S. face of the ravine of Hinnom, on a narrow level terrace, half way up, near its E. end; now Hak-ed-damm. The chalk favors decomposition; and much of it for this reason, and for its celebrity, was taken away by the empress Helena and others, for sarcophagic cemeteries. A large square edifice, half excavated in the rock, and half massive masonry, stands on the steep bank facing the pool of Siloam, as a charnel house 20 feet deep, the bottom covered with moldering bones. "The potter" represents God's absolute power over the clay framed by His own hand: so appropriate in the case of Judas, "the son of perdition," of whom Jesus says, "It had been good for that man if he had not been born"; given over to a reprobate mind and its awful doom. This is the point of Jer 18:6, which is therefore referred to by Matthew (Isa 30:14; 45:9; Ro 9:20-21).
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Hastings
Morish
Acel'dama
The word ????????, 'field of blood,' is Aramaic expressed in Greek letters, the word being differently spelt in different MSS. The field was bought with the money paid to Judas for betraying his Lord but which he in despair could not keep. In that sense he bought the field, Ac 1:18-19; whereas it was really purchased by the chief priests, Mt 27:6-8; cf. Zec 11:12. The traditional spot is on the slope of the hill south of Jerusalem, where there is a ruined structure, long used as a charnel-house. It is some 20 feet deep, with a few decaying bones at the bottom. Tradition says that the bodies were thrown into it, and that the soil possessed the power to consume them in 24 hours. Shiploads of the earth were carried away to form European burial grounds in the time of the Crusades. The soil cretaceous would favour the decomposition of the bodies.
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Smith
Acel'dama
(the field of blood) (Akeldama in the Revised Version), the name given by the Jews of Jerusalem to a field near Jerusalem purchased by Judas with the money which he received for the betrayal of Christ, and so called from his violent death therein.
The "field of blood" is now shown on the steep southern face of the valley or ravine of Hinnom, "southwest of the supposed pool of Siloam."
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Watsons
ACELDAMA, a piece of ground without the south wall of Jerusalem, on the other side of the brook Siloam. It was called the Potter's Field, because an earth or clay was dug in it of which pottery was made. It was likewise called the Fuller's Field, because cloth was dried in it. But it having been afterward bought with the money by which the high priest and ruler of the Jews purchased the blood of Jesus, it was called Aceldama, or the Field of Blood.