The location within the valley where these sacrifices took place was called Topheth (תֹּפֶת), a name whose root, toph (תוף), means “drum” or “tambourine”, because percussion instruments were beaten during the sacrifices to mask the screams of the children being burned alive in the arms of the Molech idol. The Gey Ben-Hinnom (Valley of the Son of Hinnom) also grew to mean “The Valley of Screaming Sons”. The Midrash [Yalkut Shimoni on Jeremiah 7 277.1] describes the idol as having the face of a calf with outstretched hands, heated until its arms were scorching, into which children were placed. Nachmanides, citing the Jerusalem Talmud [7:10], argues that the father himself would pass his child through the fire. Maimonides concurs with this reading.

It was the prophet Jeremiah who pronounced the divine verdict over Topheth and the Valley of Hinnom:

“And they have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire — which I commanded not, neither came it into My mind. Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that it shall no more be called Topheth, nor the valley of the son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter; for they shall bury in Topheth, for lack of room.”

– Jeremiah 7:31–32

King Josiah eventually defiled the Topheth shrine to prevent further use [2 Kings 23:10], and from that point forward, the valley became a refuse dump — a place of perpetual burning garbage, rotting corpses of criminals and unclean animals, and smoldering waste. As Rabbi David Kimhi (Radak, c. 1200 AD) later wrote, fires burned perpetually within Gehenna to consume the filth and cadavers cast into it. Yeshua would later use Gehenna as His primary image for the place of final judgment and eternal fire [Matthew 10:28; Mark 9:47–48].

The Babylonian Talmud [Eruvin 19a] records a striking tradition: Rabbi Jeremiah ben Eleazar stated that Gehenna has three gates — one in the wilderness, one in the sea, and one in Jerusalem. The school of Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai taught that there are two palm trees in the Valley of Ben Hinnom between which smoke rises, and this is the gate of Gehenna.

It is here, at this junction of curse and refuse, blood and fire, that Akeldama was purchased.

The Two Biblical Accounts

The New Testament provides two complementary accounts of how Akeldama received its name. Understanding both is essential.

Matthew’s Account — The Priests Buy the Field

“Then Judas, who had betrayed him, seeing that He was condemned, was seized with remorse and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders. ‘I have sinned,’ he said, ‘for I have betrayed innocent blood.’ ‘What is that to us?’ they replied. ‘That is your responsibility.’ So Judas threw the silver coins down in the Temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself. The chief priests picked up the coins and said, ‘It is against the law to put this into the treasury, since it is blood money.’ So they decided to use the money to buy the potter’s field as a burial place for foreigners. That is why it has been called the Field of Blood to this day.”
 
– Matthew 27:3–8

In Matthew’s telling, the blood money — thirty pieces of silver — is returned to the Temple but cannot be placed in the korban (קרבן) treasury because it is d’mei dam (דמי דם), the “price of blood.” The priests, bound by their own halachic reasoning, use the tainted silver to purchase a field already known as a “potter’s field” — a place where potters had extracted clay — and convert it into a burial ground for goyim (foreigners, strangers). The name “Field of Blood” thus arises from the blood money of Yeshua’s betrayal.

Luke’s Account in Acts — Judas Acquires the Field

“Now this man acquired a field with the reward of his unjust deed, and falling headfirst he burst open in the middle and all his intestines gushed out. This became known to all who lived in Jerusalem, so that in their own language they called that field Hakeldama, that is, ‘Field of Blood.'”
 
– Acts 1:18–19

Peter’s speech in Acts attributes the purchase directly to Judas and describes his death differently — not hanging, but falling headlong and bursting open. In this telling, the name “Field of Blood” refers to the blood of Judas himself spilled upon the ground.

These accounts are not contradictory but are layered. The money belonged to Judas; the priests acted as agents in purchasing the field with his money after he discarded it and they refused to claim it. Both the blood of Yeshua (whose life the silver purchased) and the blood of Judas (whose body burst upon the ground) saturate the name Ḥaqel D’ma. The field is doubly cursed — blood money and spilled blood.

The Prophetic Web — Jeremiah, Zechariah, and the Potter

Matthew makes an extraordinary claim after recording these events:

“Then what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled: ‘They took the thirty pieces of silver, the price set on him by the people of Israel, and they used them to buy the potter’s field, as the Lord commanded me.'”
 
– Matthew 27:9–10

This citation has perplexed scholars for centuries because the most direct verbal parallel is not from Jeremiah but from Zechariah:

“And I said to them, ‘If it seems good to you, give me my wages; but if not, keep them.’ So they weighed out as my wages thirty pieces of silver. Then the LORD said to me, ‘Throw it to the potter’,  the magnificent price at which they valued me! So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them to the potter in the house of the LORD.”
 
– Zechariah 11:12–13

The passage in Zechariah is a prophetic drama: the Good Shepherd (a figure of the Messiah) has his service terminated by the ungrateful flock, and his severance pay is an insultingly low thirty pieces of silver — the price assigned in the Torah for a gored slave [Exodus 21:32]. The silver is then thrown “to the potter” in the house of the LORD. Every detail of this prophecy maps precisely onto the events of the Passion week: the thirty coins, the Temple, the potter, and the contemptuous valuation of the Shepherd.

So why does Matthew attribute this to Jeremiah?

The answer lies in the ancient rabbinic ordering of the Nevi’im (Prophets). In the Babylonian Talmud [Baba Batra 14b], Jeremiah was placed first among the prophetic books, and the entire prophetic section was sometimes referenced by his name — much as Yeshua refers to the entire third division of Scripture as “the Psalms” in [Luke 24:44] see more here. Furthermore, Matthew is not quoting Zechariah alone but weaving together a tapestry of prophetic texts.

The Jeremiah threads are critical and often overlooked:

Jeremiah 18:1–6 — God sends Jeremiah to the potter’s house, where the potter is working the clay on a wheel. When the vessel is marred, the potter reshapes it. God declares: “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel.” The potter and the clay are introduced as symbols of God’s sovereign authority over Israel.

Jeremiah 19:1–13 — God commands Jeremiah to buy a clay flask from a potter, go to the Valley of Ben Hinnom at the entrance of the Potsherd Gate (שער החרסות), and there prophesy judgment. Jeremiah declares that this place has been filled with the blood of innocents and that God will rename it the “Valley of Slaughter.” Jeremiah then shatters the flask as a sign that God will shatter this people and this city beyond repair, “and they shall bury in Topheth, because there is no more room to bury.”

Jeremiah 32:6–15 — God commands Jeremiah to purchase a field in Anathoth from his cousin Hanamel, signing the deed and weighing out the silver, as a prophetic sign that “houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.”

Matthew sees in the events of Akeldama a convergence of all these prophetic streams: the thirty silver pieces of Zechariah, the potter’s house and the Valley of Hinnom of [Jeremiah 18–19], the prophetic field purchase of [Jeremiah 32], and the shedding of innocent blood denounced throughout Jeremiah’s ministry. As Craig Keener notes in the IVP Bible Background Commentary [Matthew 27:9–10], Matthew is purposely blending texts — quoting Zechariah almost verbatim while alluding to the broader Jeremiah framework, a method entirely at home in Second Temple Judaism and what is called midrash, the weaving of interconnected prophetic texts into a single fulfillment (read more).

Peter Leithart observes an additional layer: the blood of Yeshua, “transformed to money, purchases an Abraham-like burial plot in a land that is not His”; just as Abraham’s first land acquisition in Canaan was a burial cave for Sarah [Genesis 23], a down payment on the promise of inheritance. The potter’s field at Akeldama, purchased with the price of the Messiah, becomes a strange echo of that first purchase, a burial ground bought with his blood that points toward future possession of the entire world for his Kingdom.

The Psalmic Prophecy — The Office Left Desolate

Peter, in [Acts 1], connects Judas and Akeldama to two specific Psalms:

“Brothers, the Scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand by the mouth of David concerning Judas, who became a guide to those who arrested Yeshua… For it is written in the Book of Psalms: ‘Let his habitation become desolate, and let no one dwell in it,’ and ‘Let another take his office.”
 
– Acts 1:16, 20

The first citation is from [Psalm 69:25] (69:26 in Hebrew numbering):

“Let their camp be desolate; let no one dwell in their tents.”
 
– Psalm 69:25

The second is from [Psalm 109:8]:

“Let his days be few; let another take his office.”
 
– Psalm 109:8

[Psalm 69] is one of the most frequently cited Messianic Psalms in the New Testament. The psalmist describes betrayal by those close to him, zeal for God’s house consuming him, and being given vinegar to drink — all details fulfilled in Yeshua’s Passion. The desolation of the betrayer’s habitation finds its physical expression in Akeldama — the accursed field that became a cemetery rather than a dwelling.

[Psalm 109], known in Jewish tradition as the “Psalm of Imprecation,” describes a man whose trusted companion has turned against him with false accusation and hatred. The rabbinic literature refers to the dynamics of [Psalm 109] as a case of moser (מוסר) — one who hands over his fellow to a hostile power. Judas is the ultimate moser, handing the Righteous One over to the Romans. The psalm’s pronouncement, “let another take his office” — is precisely what the apostles fulfilled by appointing Matthias to replace Judas [Acts 1:26]. The Hebrew word for “office” here is p’qudah (פקודה), which carries the sense of an appointed charge, an oversight, a stewardship entrusted. Judas forfeited his p’qudah, and it was given to another — a rupture in the divine order immediately repaired and foretold in Psalms [Psalm 41:9, John 17:12] but not predestined.

The Red Clay — Potter’s Field and Its Meaning

The Jewish Encyclopedia (1906 edition, “Aceldama”) records that the field “once contained rich clay deposits which were worked by potters” and that “a red clay is still dug in its neighborhood”. The “potter’s house” mentioned in [Jeremiah 18:1–6] is thought by many scholars to have stood in this same area, near the Potsherd Gate at the entrance to the Valley of Hinnom [Jeremiah 19:2].

The red clay of Akeldama carries its own symbolic weight. The Hebrew word for “man” — adam (אדם) — is derived from adamah (אדמה), meaning “ground” or “earth,” and is closely related to adom (אדום), meaning “red.” The first man was formed from the red earth [Genesis 2:7]. In Akeldama, the red clay that once served potters became a grave for strangers, humanity returning to the dust from which it was taken.

We see it declared:

“But now, O LORD, You are our Father. We are the clay, and You are our potter; we are all the work of Your hand.”
 
-Isaiah 64:8

The imagery of God as Potter and Israel as clay runs throughout the prophets. At Akeldama, the potter’s field becomes the place where broken vessels (think the divorced Israel), foreigners without family, without inheritance, without a name in Israel, are buried. The Potter’s work has been rejected, and what remains is a field of shards and graves, a metaphor of the World that has rejected its Messiah.

The Soil That Devours — A Medieval Tradition

In keeping with the medieval extraordinary “traditions” Akeldama has one about its soil. Jerome (c. 400 AD) and later medieval sources record the belief that the earth of Akeldama possessed the power to consume dead bodies with unusual speed, some accounts claiming within twenty-four hours. This tradition became so widespread that in 1218 AD, shiploads of Akeldama earth were transported to Europe to fill the Campo Santo (Holy Field) cemetery in Pisa, Italy, where it was believed the soil would hasten the decomposition of the dead and thus prepare them for resurrection.

Crusader-era pilgrims considered it a great piety to be buried at Akeldama. A massive charnel vault was constructed there in the 12th century for the burial of pilgrims who died — or who came to Jerusalem specifically to die — within sight of the Holy City. Pilgrim diaries from the medieval period describe merchants filling small casks with Akeldama earth to sprinkle on graves across Europe.

This tradition, however strange it may seem, resonates with the biblical theme of the ground itself bearing witness and consequence. When Cain slew Abel, God said:

“What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to Me from the ground. Now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.”
 
-Genesis 4:10–11

The ground that received Abel’s blood became cursed ground. The ground of Akeldama, soaked in the blood money of the Messiah’s betrayal and the burst body of the betrayer, was mythologized as ground with its own terrible power, earth that consumed what was given to it.

Archaeological Discoveries in the Hinnom Valley

The area surrounding Akeldama has yielded some of the most remarkable archaeological finds in Jerusalem’s history.

The Ketef Hinnom Silver Scrolls (c. 600 BC)

In 1979, archaeologist Gabriel Barkay, excavating a series of Iron Age burial chambers at Ketef Hinnom (“Shoulder of Hinnom”), just west of Akeldama on the same slope of the Hinnom Valley,  uncovered two tiny silver scrolls in a repository beneath one of the burial chambers. When painstakingly unrolled at the Israel Museum over the course of three years, these scrolls were found to contain the Priestly Blessing from [Numbers 6:24–26]:

“The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make His face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace.”*
 
– Numbers 6:24–26

These scrolls, dating to the late 7th or early 6th century BC, are the oldest surviving texts from the Hebrew Bible — predating the Dead Sea Scrolls by approximately four centuries. They were worn as amulets — tiny declarations of faith carried against the body in the shadow of the valley that would become synonymous with hell. That the oldest known words of Scripture were found in burial caves overlooking Gehenna is one of the most profound ironies in all of biblical archaeology.

Amulet 1 also refers to Yahweh as “the one who shows graciousness to those who love Him and keep His commandments” — a phrase paralleling [Deuteronomy 7:9], [Nehemiah 1:5], and [Daniel 9:4].

Amulet 2 refers to Yahweh as the deity who has the power to expel evil. These were not pagan talismans but expressions of covenantal faith, carried into the grave by the faithful of Judah.

The Tomb of the Shroud (1st Century AD)

In 2000, archaeologists Shimon Gibson, Boaz Zissu, and James Tabor investigated a first-century tomb in the lower Hinnom Valley at the foot of Mount Zion, within the traditional Akeldama cemetery. This tomb, designated “The Tomb of the Shroud,” yielded one of the rarest finds in Jerusalem archaeology: a preserved burial shroud with a simple two-way weave, wrapped around the skeletal remains of a first-century man. Radiocarbon dating confirmed the shroud to the first century AD. Molecular analysis of the remains revealed that the man suffered from both tuberculosis and leprosy — the earliest confirmed case of leprosy detected through DNA analysis.

The small chamber had been sealed with plaster, apparently by family members who feared the visible aspects of disease. More than twenty stone ossuaries were found in the tomb complex, some bearing inscriptions in Jewish and Greek script — including the names “Mary,” “Shimon ben Shulai,” “Salome,” and “Phineas.”

That this tomb, with its shroud and its evidence of disease and isolation — was found in Akeldama, the field purchased to bury strangers and the outcast, adds a layer of poignancy to the site’s identity as a place where the forgotten and afflicted were laid to rest.

The Tomb of Annas the High Priest

On the southern slope near Akeldama, archaeologists have identified one of the most richly decorated tombs from the Second Temple period, traditionally associated with Annas (Hanan ben Seth), the high priest who first interrogated Yeshua after His arrest [John 18:13]. If this identification is correct, the irony is extraordinary — the man who helped orchestrate the condemnation of Yeshua was buried within sight of the field purchased with the blood money of that condemnation.

Prophetic Interconnections — The Convergence at Akeldama

What makes Akeldama so extraordinary is not any single event, but the sheer density of prophetic, theological, and symbolic threads that converge upon it. Consider the web:

The Price of a Slave
Thirty pieces of silver was the compensation prescribed in [Exodus 21:32] for a slave gored by an ox. Zechariah’s shepherd is paid this amount as an insult — the people of God valued their Shepherd at the price of a dead slave [Zechariah 11:12–13]. Judas receives the same sum for delivering the Good Shepherd to slaughter [Matthew 26:14–16].

The Potter and the Clay
Jeremiah watches the potter reshape a marred vessel [Jeremiah 18:1–6]. He shatters a potter’s flask in the Valley of Hinnom [Jeremiah 19:1–13]. Zechariah’s silver is thrown “to the potter” in the Temple [Zechariah 11:13]. The field purchased with the blood money is a potter’s field [Matthew 27:7]. God as Potter, Israel as clay, judgment as shattering, the entire arc converges at Akeldama.

Innocent Blood and the Valley of Slaughter
Jeremiah prophesied that the Valley of Hinnom, filled with the blood of innocents (the children sacrificed to Molech), would be renamed the Valley of Slaughter [Jeremiah 19:4–6]. Centuries later, Judas returns the silver crying, “I have betrayed innocent blood” [Matthew 27:4], and that money purchases a field in this same valley. The blood of innocents. from the children of Molech to the blood of the Lamb, soaks this ground across the centuries.

The Burial of Strangers
The potter’s field becomes a burial ground for foreigners — those outside the covenant, without inheritance or name in Israel [Matthew 27:7]. Yet this is precisely the scope of the New Covenant: “Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring” [John 10:16]. The field purchased with the blood of the Messiah becomes, in a dark but prophetic irony, a resting place for the nations.

Gehenna and Final Judgment
That Akeldama sits at the mouth of Gehenna connects the betrayal of Yeshua to the ultimate themes of eschatology. Yeshua used Gehenna as His image for final, unquenchable judgment [Mark 9:43–48]. The Babylonian Talmud [Eruvin 19a] places a gate of Gehenna in this valley. The field where the price of the Messiah’s blood was spent lies at the threshold of the place Yeshua described as the destination of those who reject God.

The Cursed Ground
From the curse upon the ground after Adam’s sin [Genesis 3:17], to the ground that received Abel’s blood [Genesis 4:10–11], to the ground of the Valley of Hinnom defiled by Molech worship, to the ground of Akeldama purchased with blood money — the earth itself is a witness and a participant in the drama of sin and redemption.

The Karat Berit Connection
The blood at Akeldama connects to the broader biblical theme of karat berit, the covenant cut in blood. Every major covenant in Scripture is sealed by blood:

1. the Abrahamic covenant through the cut animals [Genesis 15:9–17]
2. the Mosaic covenant through the blood of bulls sprinkled on the people [Exodus 24:8]
3. the New Covenant through the blood of Yeshua foretold at the Last Supper/Seudah Maphsehket [Luke 22:20]

Akeldama is where the blood money of the New Covenant was spent — the field purchased at the intersection of betrayal and redemption, a place where the cost of the covenant was literally paid out in silver and blood.

Akeldama Today

Since the 16th century, Akeldama has been the property of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem. In 1892, the Greek Orthodox Monastery of Saint Onuphrius was built on the site, named after a 3rd or 4th century monk famous for his extreme asceticism (abstinence from almost all things). The monastery occupies a narrow terrace on the southern face of the Hinnom Valley, facing Mount Zion and the Old City walls.

The hillside is honeycombed with burial caves and tombs — some holding the bones of medieval pilgrims who crossed seas to die in Jerusalem. The monastery chapel itself is a former burial cave, with niches in the walls where bodies were once laid. Over 80 burial caves have been identified in the area, the majority dating to the Herodian period (37 BC – 70 AD).

Eusebius, writing in his Onomasticon (c. 330 AD), is the earliest source to identify Akeldama at the Hinnom Valley location, and Jerome (c. 400 AD) confirmed the same identification, cementing it on Christian maps for all subsequent centuries.

In 2018, Israeli Border Police arrested a looter at the Akeldama site who had been digging with excavation tools among the ancient burial caves, underscoring that this field, purchased two millennia ago with the wages of betrayal, still draws those who seek to extract something of value from its soil.

Leen and Kathleen Ritmeyer, writing in Biblical Archaeology Review, have called Akeldama “one of the most impressive, important, yet largely unknown archaeological sites in the Holy Land.”

Lesser Known Facts About Akeldama

The Jerusalem Bible translates Akeldama as “Bloody Acre” rather than “Field of Blood,” offering a more visceral English rendering that captures the raw Aramaic sense of the name.

The Potsherd Gate (שער החרסות, Sha’ar haHarsit), mentioned in [Jeremiah 19:2] as the entrance to the Valley of Hinnom where Jeremiah prophesied, may derive its name from the abundance of broken pottery fragments at the gate, possibly refuse from the potter’s workshops that once operated in the area, connecting the “potter” imagery across multiple centuries.

The Tomb of the Shroud’s simple weave is significant because it differs from the complex 3/1 herringbone twill linen weave of the famous Turin Shroud, providing an important data point for comparison in first-century burial practices in Jerusalem and the mythic cloth that is continually debated.

A Final Reflection — Blood Crying from the Ground

Akeldama is not merely a historical curiosity. It is a place where the threads of Scripture — stretching from Genesis to Acts, from the curse on Cain’s ground to the gates of Gehenna — are woven into a single, terrible, and beautiful tapestry.

The blood money of the Messiah purchased a grave for strangers. The ground that had consumed the bodies of sacrificed children received the wages of the ultimate innocent blood. The field that could not be owned by the Temple treasury, because it was too stained to sanctify, became holy ground of a different kind: a resting place for those who had no other home.

In the end, Akeldama testifies to what all of Scripture testifies: that the ground itself keeps account, that blood cries out from the earth, and that even the most cursed terrain in Jerusalem was drawn into the redemptive purposes of God.