Matthew 27:9: Quoted from Jeremiah?

Many solutions have been proposed to meet the two difficulties connected with Matt 27:9, 10.i. As to the first difficulty, the words quoted from Jeremiah are not found in his written prophecy : and it has been suggested1. That "Matthew quoted from memory" (Augustine and others).2. That the passage was originally in Jeremiah, but the Jews cut it out (Eusebius and others); though no evidence for this is produced.3. That it was contained in another writing by Jeremiah, which is now lost (Origen and others).4. That Jeremiah is put for the whole body of the prophets (Bishop Lightfoot and others), though no such words can be found in the other prophets.5. That it was "a slip of the pen" on the part of Matthew (Dean Alford).6. That the mistake was allowed by the Holy Spirit on purpose that we may not trouble ourselves as to who the writers were, but receive all prophecy as direct from God, Who spake by them (Bishop Wordsworth).7. That some annotator wrote "Jeremiah" in the margin and it "crept" into the text (Smith's Bible Dictionary).These suggestions only create difficulties much more grave than the one which they attempt to remove. But all of them are met and answered by the simple fact that Matthew does not say it was written by Jeremiah, but that it was "spoken" by him.This makes all the difference : for some prophecies were spoken (and not written), some were written (and not spoken), while others were both spoken and written.Of course, by the Fig. Metonymy (of cause, Ap. 6), one may be said to "say" what he has written; but we need not go out of our way to use this figure, if by so doing we create the very difficulty we are seeking to solve. There is all the difference in the world between to rhethen ( = that which was spoken), and ho gegraptai ( = that which stands written).