Category: Troubled Time
Scriptures:
Jeremiah 38:1-38:13
Jeremiah 38:1-38:13
1 Shephatiah the son of Mattan, and Gedaliah the son of Pashhur, and Jucal the son of Shelemiah, and Pashhur the son of Malchijah, heard the words that Jeremiah spoke to all the people, saying,
2 “Yahweh says, ‘He who remains in this city will die by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence; but he who goes out to the Chaldeans will live, and he will escape with his life, and he will live.’
3 Yahweh says, ‘This city will surely be given into the hand of the army of the king of Babylon, and he will take it.’”
4 Then the princes said to the king, “Please let this man be put to death; because he weakens the hands of the men of war who remain in this city, and the hands of all the people, in speaking such words to them: for this man doesn’t seek the welfare of this people, but harm.”
5 Zedekiah the king said, “Behold, he is in your hand; for the king can’t do anything to oppose you.”
6 Then took they Jeremiah and threw him into the dungeon of Malchijah the king’s son, that was in the court of the guard. They let down Jeremiah with cords. In the dungeon there was no water, but mire; and Jeremiah sank in the mire.
7 Now when Ebedmelech the Ethiopian, a eunuch, who was in the king’s house, heard that they had put Jeremiah in the dungeon (the king was then sitting in Benjamin’s gate),
8 Ebedmelech went out of the king’s house, and spoke to the king, saying,
9 “My lord the king, these men have done evil in all that they have done to Jeremiah the prophet, whom they have cast into the dungeon. He is likely to die in the place where he is, because of the famine; for there is no more bread in the city.”
10 Then the king commanded Ebedmelech the Ethiopian, saying, “Take from here thirty men with you, and take up Jeremiah the prophet out of the dungeon, before he dies.”
11 So Ebedmelech took the men with him, and went into the house of the king under the treasury, and took from there rags and worn-out garments, and let them down by cords into the dungeon to Jeremiah.
12 Ebedmelech the Ethiopian said to Jeremiah, “Now put these rags and worn-out garments under your armpits under the cords.” Jeremiah did so.
13 So they drew up Jeremiah with the cords, and took him up out of the dungeon; and Jeremiah remained in the court of the guard.
Commentary
During most of his prophetic career, Jeremiah was either narrowly escaping death, or imprisoned with charges of treason, collaboration and desertion. He was the target of the most foiled assassination attempts of all the prophets.
One of these plots was to kill Jeremiah by drowning him in a cistern below the courtyard of the king's palace. After the Babylonians captured Judah, they exiled all the nobility including King Jehoiachin to the "rivers of Babylon." Zedekieh, the last king of Judah, ruled as a Babylonian puppet. However, Zedekieh attempted to double-crosse the Babylonians by forging a pact with the Egyptians. Jeremiah advised the king to abandon his strategy and open the gates of the capital city to the Babylonian army so Judah could survive.
The king’s officials accused Jeremiah of treason and tried to drown him by dropping him into a cistern that they thought was full. Happily, “there was no water in the cistern, only mud, and into the mud Jeremiah sank.” (Jeremiah 38:6) Ebed-melech, the king’s Ethiopian servant, feared for Jeremiah’s life and came to the rescue. He took torn, worn-out rags (we’ll tie together some red checked “keffiyehs” when we reenact the story) and threw them down with some ropes. It took no less than thirty men to haul Jeremiah up out of that cistern. (I wonder how many falafels Jeremiah had eaten beforehand!)
"And Jeremiah stayed in the Court of the Guard until the day Jerusalem was captured." (Jeremiah 38: 26)