What Does Matthew 27:6 Mean?
The chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood.THE KEY
The silver cannot enter the treasury as anonymous money: its name still says blood.
THE MEANING
The money’s source remains present in what it is called: it is the price of blood. Even as the priests handle the coins, they say that this origin makes them unlawful for the treasury.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that money becomes neutral once it is received: its source still matters when deciding where it may go.
THE ROOT
τιμή
timē
GROWS FROM
τιμ-
Value, esteem, or honor.
The word translated “price” belongs to the same word-family as honor and preciousness; it names assigned value, not coins in isolation. Here, the silver carries a valuation placed on a life, and that valuation remains even when the priests reject its destination.
ALSO GROWS
timaō: To honor or value.
τιμάω
It shares the τιμ- stem and shows that the word-family of “price” also names the act of assigning worth.
timios: Precious, valuable, or honored.
τίμιος
It shares the same stem and makes the connection between monetary value and what is esteemed explicit.
αἷμα
haima
GROWS FROM
αἱματ-
Blood; αἱματ- is the stem appearing in forms of the word.
This stem also forms words for blood-shedding and blood-staining, so “blood” is not an abstract moral label but the language of a substance poured out. The silver remains named by that bodily cost even when the discussion turns to where it may be deposited.
ALSO GROWS
haimatekchysia: Blood-shedding.
αἱματεκχυσία
The shared αἱματ- stem keeps the price linked to the act of shedding blood.
haimatēros: Bloody or blood-stained.
αἱματηρός
This branch shows how the same stem can describe something marked by blood, echoing the money’s stated origin.
THE PATTERN
What is brought before God remains joined to the way it was obtained.
You shall not bring the wages of a harlot or the price of a dog into the house of the LORD your God for any vow, for even both of these are things the LORD your God recoils from.When you spread your palms, I will shut my eyes to you. Even when you multiply your prayers, I will not hear and respond. Your hands are filled with blood.Look, the wages of the workers who mowed your fields, stripped away by your fraud, cry out, and the cries of those who reaped have gone into the ears of the LORD of hosts.THE THREAD
For you were bought in the marketplace for a price; so give weight to God in your body, and in your breath, which are God's.Matthew uses τιμή for the silver’s “price”; Paul uses the same Greek word when saying you are bought with a price. The shared word carries the question of value from these coins to the reader’s own life.
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