Question:
Could you please explain Acts 7:16 to me? Is there an error made by Luke regarding Abraham buying land in relation to Jacob? Also, in Matthew 27:9, it seems that Matthew quotes Jeremiah, yet it was Zechariah who spoke about Jesus being sold for 30 pieces of silver. Can you shed more light on this?
Answer:
Both of the passages you raised are among the most frequently cited “Bible difficulties,” and they have been discussed by Jewish and Christian interpreters for centuries. In neither case are we dealing with a careless mistake or ignorance on the part of the biblical authors. What often appears to us as an “error” usually dissolves once we remember that ancient writers did not quote Scripture or summarize history the way modern Western readers expect them to. The biblical authors were not writing with footnotes, quotation marks, or rigid citation rules in mind. They were communicating theology through history, using literary conventions that were well understood in their time.
Let me walk through each passage and explain what is most likely happening.
In Acts 7:16, Stephen says that the patriarchs “were carried over into Sychem, and laid in the sepulchre that Abraham bought for a sum of money of the sons of Emmor the father of Sychem.” At first glance, this seems to conflict with Genesis. Scripture clearly tells us that Abraham bought the cave of Machpelah in Hebron from Ephron the Hittite as a burial place (Genesis 23:17–20; 25:9–10), while Jacob later purchased a parcel of land at Shechem from the sons of Hamor (Genesis 33:18–19). Jacob was ultimately buried in Machpelah, not Shechem (Genesis 49:29–32; 50:13).
However, Stephen is not giving a courtroom-style historical reconstruction. He is delivering a sweeping, theological summary of Israel’s history while standing before the Sanhedrin (Acts 7:1–53). In a single speech he compresses hundreds of years of events, and in doing so he employs what ancient speakers commonly did—telescoping the narrative. Stephen brings together the two great patriarchal land-purchase accounts: Abraham’s purchase of a burial site in Hebron and Jacob’s purchase of land in Shechem. His point is not to catalogue property deeds but to emphasize something far more significant: the patriarchs never truly possessed the land God promised them. As God told Abraham, his seed would be “a stranger in a land that is not theirs” (Genesis 15:13), and Hebrews later confirms that the patriarchs “confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth” (Hebrews 11:13). Their only permanent foothold in the land during their lifetimes consisted of graves.
There is also an important textual nuance in Stephen’s wording. He distinguishes between Jacob and “our fathers” (Acts 7:15–16). Scripture tells us that Joseph was buried at Shechem, in the parcel of ground Jacob bought (Joshua 24:32), and extra-biblical Jewish tradition held that the other sons of Jacob were buried there as well. If Stephen is focusing primarily on the burial of the patriarchs—the brothers—then Shechem is an entirely fitting reference. While some have suggested that Abraham may have acquired land in Shechem earlier when he built an altar there (Genesis 12:6–7), Scripture does not record such a purchase, and that view remains speculative. The weight of the evidence points to intentional compression rather than confusion.
The second passage, Matthew 27:9, involves a different kind of question but rests on a similar misunderstanding of ancient citation practices. Matthew writes that the betrayal of Jesus for thirty pieces of silver fulfilled what was “spoken by Jeremy the prophet,” even though the explicit mention of the thirty pieces of silver appears in Zechariah 11:12–13. This troubles modern readers who assume Matthew is claiming a word-for-word quotation. But Matthew is doing something far more Jewish than modern: he is drawing together multiple prophetic threads into a single fulfillment.
Zechariah supplies the specific detail of the price—thirty pieces of silver—and the act of casting the money into the house of the LORD (Zechariah 11:12–13). Jeremiah, however, supplies the dominant imagery and theological context. In Jeremiah 18, the prophet is sent to the potter’s house to observe God’s sovereign dealings with Israel. In Jeremiah 19, Jeremiah buys a potter’s earthen bottle and goes to the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, pronouncing judgment and bloodshed upon the nation. That same area later became associated with death and defilement. Additionally, Jeremiah 32:6–15 records Jeremiah purchasing a field with silver as a prophetic sign amid coming judgment.
When Judas returns the silver and the chief priests use it to buy the potter’s field—a place afterward called “the field of blood” (Matthew 27:6–8)—Matthew sees the convergence of these prophetic themes: rejection of God’s shepherd, a contemptuous valuation, bloodguilt, judgment, and a field connected with death. The words come from Zechariah; the controlling imagery and theological weight come from Jeremiah.
As to why Matthew names Jeremiah rather than Zechariah, this reflects standard Jewish interpretive practice. When multiple prophetic texts were woven together, the quotation was often attributed to the more prominent or thematically dominant prophet. Jeremiah, as a Major Prophet whose imagery governs the scene, naturally takes precedence. Additionally, in some ancient Jewish arrangements of the prophetic books, Jeremiah stood at the head of the prophetic collection. Thus, citing “Jeremiah” could function as a way of pointing readers to the prophetic witness as a whole.
What confirms this even further is that Matthew’s handling of Jeremiah and Zechariah is not an isolated case. The New Testament writers regularly employed what we would call composite quotation—weaving together multiple Old Testament texts to express a single theological truth. In doing so, they consistently prioritized the theological theme being fulfilled rather than the technical precision demanded by modern citation standards. When this pattern is recognized, Matthew 27:9 fits squarely within an established and widely used interpretive method.
A classic example appears at the very opening of Mark’s Gospel. Mark writes, “As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord” (Mark 1:2–3). The difficulty is obvious: the first line comes from Malachi 3:1, while only the second line comes from Isaiah 40:3. Yet Mark attributes the entire composite quotation to Isaiah. This is not an error, but a deliberate choice. Isaiah is the Major Prophet, and Isaiah 40 provides the dominant theological framework—the coming of the LORD Himself, preceded by a forerunner. Malachi’s words are drawn in to complete the picture, but Isaiah governs the theme, and therefore Isaiah receives the attribution.
Paul uses the same technique in Romans 9:33, where he writes, “As it is written, Behold, I lay in Sion a stumblingstone and rock of offence: and whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.” No such verse exists verbatim in the Old Testament. Paul is intentionally merging Isaiah 8:14, which speaks of the LORD as “a stone of stumbling and for a rock of offence,” with Isaiah 28:16, which promises that “he that believeth shall not make haste.” By joining these texts, Paul presents a unified theological truth: Christ is simultaneously the sure foundation for believers and the stumbling stone for the unbelieving. Again, the goal is not quotation precision, but theological clarity.
Matthew himself gives another illuminating example in Matthew 2:23, where he says that Jesus dwelling in Nazareth fulfilled what was spoken by the prophets, “He shall be called a Nazarene.” No such statement appears anywhere in the Old Testament. Significantly, Matthew does not cite a single prophet, but “the prophets” collectively. He is not quoting a verse; he is summarizing a prophetic theme. Most scholars rightly recognize a wordplay here on the Hebrew Netzer, meaning “Branch.” Isaiah foretold that “there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch (Netzer) shall grow out of his roots” (Isaiah 11:1). Matthew’s point is that Jesus growing up in obscure Nazareth—”Branch-town,” as it were—fulfills the prophetic expectation of a lowly, despised Messiah, a theme echoed across the prophets (cf. Isaiah 53:2–3).
When these examples are placed side by side, the pattern becomes unmistakable. The New Testament writers frequently combined texts, attributed them to a representative or dominant prophet, or summarized prophetic themes without quoting a single verse. This was not sloppy handling of Scripture; it was faithful, Spirit-guided interpretation within the accepted Jewish hermeneutics of the time. Matthew’s citation of Jeremiah in connection with the thirty pieces of silver follows this same well-established pattern precisely.
Once this is understood, the force of the objection disappears. What modern readers sometimes label a contradiction is, in reality, a misunderstanding of ancient literary method. The biblical authors were not careless with Scripture—they were deeply immersed in it, handling it in ways their original audience readily understood.
