Piece of Silver

"Pieces of silver" in the OT refers to weighed silver used as currency before the minting of coins. The Hebrew keseph simply means silver; its value was determined by weight rather than denomination. Joseph was sold for twenty pieces of silver (Gen. 37:28), and the standard price for a slave was thirty (Ex. 21:32; Zech. 11:12). In Zechariah 11:12–13 the thirty pieces of silver paid to the shepherd-prophet were thrown into the house of the LORD — interpreted in Matthew 27:9–10 as fulfilled in Judas's betrayal price.

After the Persian period, actual silver coins (the Greek drachma and later the stater) circulated in Israel. In the NT, the drachma (a silver coin of roughly a day's wage) appears in the parable of the Lost Coin (Luke 15:8), and the stater (worth four drachmas) is the coin found in the fish's mouth for the temple tax (Matt. 17:27).