As I was reading John 13 this morning, I found myself thinking: how did Judas’ father, Simon, feel about all this? John mentions him several times, which begged this kind of study. Enjoy.
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Before you can understand Simon, you first have to understand the world that formed him. First century Judea was a pressure cooker of longing. Rome’s boots were on every road. Pharisees tightened their doctrinal fences around the Law. Sadducees held the Temple reins like political currency. The Essenes hid in the desert with scrolls and fire in their eyes. Zealots whispered rebellion under their breath. Into this world, was born a child named Yehudah (Judah, Judas). He was born to a man named Shimon (שִׁמְעוֹן), a name meaning to hear, to listen, to obey. Names in Hebrew culture were not decorations. They were prophetic banners. When Shimon named his son Yehudah, he invoked praise, thanksgiving, the royal authority of the tribe of Judah. Yehudah is the root of the word Jew itself. The fall of Judas was not just personal ruin; it was a fracture in the symbolic name of the nation.
Judas grew up in a multilingual world: Hebrew for prayer and Scripture, Aramaic for the marketplace Greek for trade and governance. He argued prices in Aramaic, understood Scripture in Hebrew and heard Roman proclamations in Greek. When John calls him “huios Simōnos IsK’Riot,” he identifies Judas through his father’s house, not political identity. IsK’Riot comes from Ish K’riot, a Judean town, making Judas the only disciple from outside Galilee. Cultural difference creates subtle tension. Judeans were stricter, closer to the Temple, more politically entangled. Galileans were passionate, stubborn, a bit rebellious. The disciples would have seen Judas as southern, aligned with the Temple world that eventually ensnared him.
The gematria of Yehudah (Judas) is astonishing: י Yod (10) + ה Heh (5) + ו Vav (6) + ד Dalet (4) + ה Heh (5) = thirty, the number of silver pieces. His very name equals the cost of his betrayal. Shimon’s gematria is 466, linked to shemesh, the sun, illumination, and discernment. Imagine a father with a name tied to revelation watching his son slide into darkness.
In Jewish households, fathers bore spiritual responsibility for their sons. Shimon recited the Shema with Judas, bound God’s words on his heart, took him to synagogue, and guided him through the prophecies of Isaiah, Micah, Zechariah. Judas knew of the Suffering Servant of Bethlehem, of the pierced one, long before he met Yeshua. A father raised not just a son, but the continuation of his lineage. Shimon saw promise in Judas, quick with Torah, sharp with numbers. When Judas followed Yeshua, that promise felt like divine favor, only to be crushed by betrayal.
What did Shimon believe about Yeshua? If he believed He might be the Messiah, Judas’s betrayal shattered everything holy. If he believed Yeshua was dangerous or unorthodox, Judas’s betrayal may have seemed justified, until the terrible results unfolded. Fathers in that age were honor-bound to uphold truth. Imagine realizing the One your son delivered to death was Israel’s awaited King.
The cultural concept of family shame ran deep. A son’s sin reflected on the father, which is why John repeats “son of Shimon.” Sin stains households, scars reputations. The community would whisper, pity, or avoid them. Judas’ mother, unnamed but fully known in heaven, would carry her grief in secret.
And the foot washing, Yeshua, just a few short hours before the betrayal, washed Judas’s feet. The rabbi humbled Himself to the lowest servant’s task, even for a betrayer. If Shimon knew this, his heart would have broken anew: divine mercy received and yet rejected by his son.
Greek adds depth: the phrase “the devil had already put into the heart of Judas” uses ballō (βάλλω), meaning to throw, cast, plant a seed. Evil was placed in Judas; a father hearing this would question every moment of raising him. Not from guilt but from the weight of devastation.
KeR’iot mattered. Judeans looked down on Galileans, had closer ties to the priesthood and exposure to Temple politics. Judas grew up hearing the voices that later seduced him. Familiarity made deception easier.
The thirty pieces of silver echo Torah: the price of a wounded slave (Exodus 21:32). Judas valued the Messiah as such, a brutal insult known to all who understood the Law. Simon would have felt every nuance of that serious humiliation.
When the news arrived in KeR’iot, Simon and his household might have experienced the human whispering network of fear and scandal. The word for betrayal in Hebrew, bagad (בגד) implies covenant-breaking, faithlessness, fracturing sacred trust. Simon was not just the father of a sinner, he was the father of the betrayer. His wife carried grief no language could fully contain. She was feeling the cosmic weight of her son handing over the Messiah.
Even when Judas returned the silver, the brief flicker of hope, “Maybe he repents”, was crushed when news came of his death. Suicide brought unbearable sorrow. Simon and his wife faced double torment: betrayal and cursed death. Everything collapsed at once: family honor, name, future. Yet John never mocks them. He preserves the name Simon, not for shame, but to witness the grief of those caught in another’s sin.
Now lift the veil. Scripture says Satan entered Judas at betrayal, not a demon, not a whisper, Satan himself. Judas became the hinge of a spiritual war, sending shockwaves through his family. In the Jewish worldview family was covenantal, spiritual, interwoven with destiny. Judas stepping outside God’s boundaries desecrated the household, causing a spiritual earthquake. Yeshua said, “Not all of you are clean.” When darkness strikes a household, parents feel it first. Simon’s home, a miniature Temple, if you will, experienced a private “veil torn in two”. Not glory, only agony.
Prophecy threads the tapestry. Judas was necessary, not forced. Psalm 41:9 and Zechariah 11:12-13 point to betrayal from within. The pattern repeats Joseph’s betrayal (Genesis 37:28). Judas’ name, Greek for Yehudah, links him to the tribe that brought forth the Messiah. His betrayal fulfills prophecy, and Simon’s pain becomes part of the divine story.
Judas’ family walked a shadow matching Israel’s. Their grief mirrors the nation’s; their loss, humanity’s. A father wounded by rebellion, a mother crushed by ruin, a community whispering, a world shaken, and God redeeming. Their private agony is part of the world’s salvation story. Heaven saw it; God wrote it into Scripture with compassion. Shimon’s very name, Shimon, from shamato hear, echoes God’s listening: “I heard you. I saw you. You were not invisible while history broke around you.”
Perhaps Simon wrestled with doubt, wondering if he could ever forgive, if he could see Yeshua as King after all that had broken his home. Or perhaps, in quiet surrender, he began to glimpse the Messiah’s truth, sensing mercy and hope even amid grief, leaving the final redemption for the day and the return of HaMashiach.