Matthias

2. The first time Matthias saw...

As might be expected, Herod Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee and Perea, had heard of the minor revolt, and he questioned his soldiers as to how fair they were in the arrests. Those suspected received a stern warning and were just released.

Now it was the fifth day of the week.

Next came this: as Matthias worked in the blacksmith's shop, he heard steps. The door was open when the shop was open. So Matthias could clearly see Roman soldiers marching over here.

One soldier stepped in, clean-shaven. "You're Zadok the blacksmith?"

Okay, what did Zadok do? Matthias simply responded, "No, but I am learning from him, so I can make nails for you, sirs." Next, Matthias realized what he just implied!

But the soldier nodded. "For Celeb and his fellow ringleaders!"

So no matter how minor the rebellion, Antipas would still use crucifixion? How low could he get?

Matthias hesitated. To give these Romans the nails would be to turn traitor against his fellow Jews. But he muttered to the warriors, "So how... many nails do you need?"

The soldier said, "Well, there's four or five sentenced to crucifixion—"

"It's five, brother," said one of the other soldiers. It's in Latin, so Matthias did not understand.

"Ah, five. Five it is," proceeded the soldier speaking to me. "So that means you must provide... um..." He turns to his companion. "The feet also?" he asked in Latin.

"That's up to us, brother," the other comrade answered, again in the Latin tongue.

"Ah, well then..." he said, slipping back into Aramaic, "then, sir, that'll be... that'll be like 15 nails, 15 sharp nails."

Matthias thought this one act could haunt him for life! But he felt hopeless against trained warriors. He said, "Look, I've never seen a crucifixion. So how long do you want the nails?" He simply added, "Sorry for asking."

The soldier answered him, "Ten of them should be two hand-breadths long, and 5 of them should be one span long. You can do that, can you?"

Matthias shut his eyes. If he backed down, then he would surely get punished. If he proceeded to fulfill their wish, he would get backlash from my people. It's this war inside him.

But he finally gets the tools and some iron.

It's one of the difficult dilemmas of life, and Matthias was just going to have to make the nails. He cannot compromise in this situation, for how could he please both these Romans and his own Jewish people? But the iron was being made into the dreaded nails in order to be used in crucifixion.

"1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 of these," he said as he passed the smaller nails into the soldiers' nail bag, notably empty. He got the span-length nails and put them inside the bag also. "And here's 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5." Please, he would not want to pass on the impression he's cheating on numbers.

"How much for these good nails?" the soldier asked him.

"Well, for those nails it's one denarius, sir," Matthias answered his overlord.

"Yes, one denarius is reasonable," the soldier said as he took his moneybag and dropped several denarii unto his other hand. He pulled out one and passed it to Matthias' open palm. "One denarius, nail-maker," he said. Then, having placed the other coins back into the moneybag, he and the other soldiers left with the 15 nails.

Matthias, in the meantime, looked down on that denarius in his hand. This is a fair day's pay for a common laborer. There's that imprinted image of the emperor at the front, telling him what he had done this transaction for. Rome. He muttered to himself, "I'm so done for. My people won't forgive me for this."