But the chief priests took the silver and said, “It is not lawful to put them into the temple treasury, because they are the price of blood.”
This statement reveals the ambiguity of religious formalism: those who, without conscience, handed over the Innocent One now try, in a merely formal way, to keep the law. The chief priests acknowledge that the silver is the “price of blood,” that is, money defiled by innocent blood, yet they do not realize that they themselves are the ones who shed that blood. Their words, “it is not lawful,” show an extreme false piety, when a person keeps the outward letter of the law but violates its spirit. This scene becomes a tragic image of that spiritual blindness in which sin is recognized by reason but rejected by the heart. The chief priests did not understand that the coins in their hands were not evidence weighing on the treasury, but proofs weighing on the conscience.