Transparency

One may assume that thirty pieces of silver was a good deal of money in ancient times. However; in Hebrew culture it was the exact price paid to a slave owner if their property was inadvertently gored by their neighbor’s ox. Famously, thirty pieces of silver was also the amount the temple priests paid Judas for betraying Jesus. Perhaps a lesser-known reference to thirty pieces of silver occurs in the book of Zechariah. After being employed as a shepherd he told his employer to pay him what he thought he was worth and was given thirty pieces of silver — a great insult. In response, God instructs Zachariah to “throw it to the potter” so he tossed it into the temple court to be given to the potter working there. Written five hundred years before his birth, many believe this was a foreshadowing of Jesus’ betrayal and crucifixion.

Eerily, tossing the silver coins into the temple court was exactly what Judas did with his blood-money before taking his own life. The priests, not wanting to put tainted money back into the temple treasury, used it to purchase a field from a potter where they could bury foreigners — the “potter’s field.” These thirty pieces of silver have always served as a powerful metaphor for how we all too often treat those around us. If we are fully transparent, we are all capable of dehumanizing others, devaluing their contributions and using them for our personal benefit. The work above, entitled thirty pieces of silver, is one in a series of visual journal entries. The series is a meditation on the value of every human life, a caution not to see other individuals as pawns in a game and to steer clear of corrupt schemes.