Acts 1:15-20

Amplified Bible

¹⁵Now on one of these days Peter stood up among the brothers and sisters (a gathering of about a hundred and twenty believers was there) and he said, ¹⁶“Brothers and sisters, it was necessary that the Scripture be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit foretold by the lips of David [king of Israel] about Judas [Iscariot], who acted as guide to those who arrested Jesus. ¹⁷For he (Judas) was counted among us and received his share [by divine allotment] in this ministry.” ¹⁸(Now Judas Iscariot ^[a]acquired a piece of land [indirectly] with the [money paid him as a] reward for his treachery, and falling headlong, his body burst open in the middle and all his intestines poured out. ¹⁹All the people in Jerusalem learned about this, so in their own dialect—Aramaic—they called the piece of land Hakeldama, that is, Field of Blood.) ²⁰“For in the book of Psalms it is written,

‘Let his place of residence become desolate,
And let there be no one to live in it’;

and [again],

‘Let another take his position as overseer.’^(A)

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Footnotes

Acts 1:18 Peter means that the chief priests purchased the field in Judas’ name. He had returned to them with the money, and when they refused to accept it, he threw it into the temple sanctuary (Matt 27:3 ff). Afterwards they decided to buy the field for use as a burial ground for strangers. Peter goes on to say that Judas was disemboweled in a fall, while Matthew reports that Judas hanged himself (Matt 27:5). One explanation for the apparent discrepancy is that the rope or line that Judas was using broke, and the body fell in such a way as to be disemboweled (Matt 27:3 ff).