Today is the Wednesday of Holy Week--a quieter day. Jesus once again went to the temple to teach where the crowds awaited Him early in the morning, but there were no deceitful questioners. There was no one trying to trick him, no one trying to discredit Him.
Why? Had the chief priests and scribes given up?
The first reason they did not engage him publicly again was that after Tuesday's fiasco, in which Jesus bested them in every test, making them look foolish rather than the other ways around (as they had planned), no one dared ask Him any more questions. They had had enough. They didn't wanted any more efforts to backfire, as all of them had on Tuesday.
But had they given up? Hardly. They simply took another tactic. Many of the leaders had already determined that Jesus should die. How much easier that would have been to maneuver had Jesus suddenly become unpopular. That was not going to happen--at least, not the way they had envisioned it and planned it.
Another, more ominous strategy came to them, though. They didn't have to think it up. It fell right into their laps. On Tuesday at the evening meal, a woman came in and anointed Jesus using a very expensive perfume. Judas, the keeper of the money for the group, rebuked her, saying that the money could be sold and the money given to the poor. Judas was not concerned about the poor in this case, however. He had started the habit of helping himself to some of the money that he looked after for the group.
"Leave her alone!" said Jesus. This Judas--Judas Iscariot--had already fallen to temptation in the matter of the money. Angry at Jesus' rebuke, he allowed Satan to enter him. He knew what it was the chief priests and scribes wanted--a way to arrest Jesus and deal with Him when He wasn't in front of the adoring crowd. So, either Tuesday night late or on Wednesday, Judas went to the chief priests and offered to hand Him over when no crowd was present. They were delighted to hear this and offered him thirty pieces of silver for his betrayal.
And so, Judas began plotting for a way to turn his master over in a more private setting. This was the Wednesday of Holy Week.
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