Wednesday of Passion Week

It would appear that the betrayal of Jesus by Judas takes place on Wednesday of Passion Week. This is when he made contact with the chief priests to make a deal for turning Him over to them. In supernatural fulfillment of the prophecy of Zechariah 11:12, the agreed upon price is 30 pieces of silver. In today’s terms, that might be around $950. During that time, this would have been sufficient to buy a small farm, so the deal was a significant bribe.

From that point on, Judas began to look for a good time to actually put the deal in motion, to find a time to actually put Jesus in the hands of those seeking to kill Him.

Otherwise, Wednesday of this week seems to be quiet, or at least with less activity on display, as least from the viewpoint of Scripture. We might assume more teaching went on in Jerusalem, either publically or in a smaller setting of just disciples. People would be busy about making final plans for the upcoming Passover, so the city would have still been a very active place.

Perhaps Jesus retreated to rest and pray, maybe even staying in Bethany with his close friends. We can probably think of times when something is coming up that we just don’t want to deal with, and during long periods of inactivity, our thoughts can run wild with anxiety, and so w find it necessary to busy ourselves to keep our minds occupied with other things. This does not appear to be so with Jesus, though stating this is clearly an assumption based on little or no evidence from the Gospel accounts. Yet the pattern of His life was such that he was known to retreat to prayer, for rest, for some quiet time, and knowing what was ahead, I would be comfortable believing that He simply took Wednesday to meditate on His task, to look back on His earthly ministry, ready to sum it up over the next few days.

The centurions who will be key players are oblivious at this point to what they will be doing in two days. Pilate is enjoying the swell of commerce and taxes into the city, unaware that he will soon be center stage with the Christ. Judas has his money in hand; the chief priests see the realization of their years of hoping this time would come. The stage is set for what you and I desperately needed and could get no other way.