A YouTube commenter challenges:

2) Did Jeremiah just get lucky when he prophesied that Jesus would be bought by men for precisely 30 silver, centuries later?

Jeremiah didn’t actually do that. Zechariah is what is being referenced. The context has nothing to do with Jesus.

Zec 11:12 Then I said to them, “If it is agreeable to you, give me my wages; and if not, refrain.” So they weighed out for my wages thirty pieces of silver.

In fact, if no 30 pieces of silver were ever used to purchase a field, no one would ever have heard of this failed prophecy. There is zero indication in Zechariah that this is a prophecy!

In ancient Israel, they showed truth by showing parallels. Things were true if they had precedence. That is what Matthew does when he says scripture is “fulfilled”. The fulfilled scripture usually has zero indication of having a secondary prophetic meaning. Paul and James even use precedence to prove competing points! And the context of some of Paul’s prooftexts are often the opposite point he advocates with the prooftexts. The idea is parallelism, not prophecy.