Errancy.com

The New Testament contains two accounts of Judas’s death, one in Matthew and the other in Acts. Both accounts make mention of the Field of Blood, and both describe how this field got its name.

According to Matthew, when Jesus’ was condemned Judas repented and returned to the chief priests the money that they had paid him for his betrayal. The chief priests used this money to purchase a field which, because it was bought with blood money, came to be known as the Field of Blood:

When Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he repented and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders. He said, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.” But they said, “What is that to us? See to it yourself.” Throwing down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed; and he went and hanged himself. But the chief priests, taking the pieces of silver, said, “It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, since they are blood money.” After conferring together, they used them to buy the potter’s field as a place to bury foreigners. For this reason that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day. [Matthew 27:3-8]

According to Acts, the Field of Blood got its name from the gruesome way in which Judas died there:

Now this man [Judas] acquired a field with the reward of his wickedness; and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out. This became known to all the residents of Jerusalem, so that the field was called in their language Hakeldama, that is, Field of Blood. [Acts 1:18-19]

So was the Field of Blood so called because it was bought with blood money, or because of Judas’s bloody death there?