Day 231. Jeremiah 38-41

In our reading for today the bitter fruit finally ripens and falls.
These chapters about the last days of the Judean kingdom are filled with strange names, and it is sometimes difficult to keep all those names straight. The three persons mentioned in 38:1 are officials in the court of King Zedekiah, the last king of Judah. The city of Jerusalem is hemmed in and besieged. The prophet Jeremiah has been telling the people that if they remain in the city they will die "by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence," but those who go out to the Babylonian besiegers will "have their lives as a prize of war, and live" (38:3). These three officials go to King Zedekiah with the accusation—true as far as it goes—that the prophet is destroying the morale of the soldiers and undermining the confidence of the people in those who are undertaking their defense. "This man is not seeking the welfare of his people, but their harm"—it is an accusation that is leveled at prophets who speak the word of God in every time. So,
apparently on their own authority, they put Jeremiah with ropes into a cistern; there is no water in it, but the text says that he "[sinks] in the mud" (38:6).
An unlikely rescuer appears-- as Ethiopian eunuch attached to the royal household named Ebed-melech hears what has happened and goes to the king to inform him that his officials have thrown the prophet into a cistern to die of hunger. King Zedekiah—who is often painted in dark colors, but who has his humane moments-- sends three men to pull the prophet Jeremiah out of the cistern. The eunuch—a practical as well as a kind person-- even thinks to bring rags to put under the prophet's armpits so that he could be hauled up with ropes. He remains isolated and under close guard—a dangerous prisoner--his condition we can only imagine.
But he remains a force that cannot be ignored or forgotten. King Zedekiah summons Jeremiah to a secret meeting "at the third entrance of the temple." They talk alone and in confidence, the king revealing his secret fears, the prophet counseling him to "obey the voice of the LORD" and surrender to the king of Babylon, so that his life may be spared, and the city not be burned with fire" (38:17). But the humiliation is too great for one who has been a king, and Zedekiah does not obey. Instead he tells Jeremiah to keep their meeting secret and say, if he is asked, that they met so that he might present his plea to be released from prison. The prophet allows himself to be party to this little deception and he keeps their conversation a secret, remaining confined in the court of the guard until the city is taken.
And it is finally taken in a last assault. We are spared the details of the butchery, looting, and rape. Seeing that all is lost King Zedekiah and his remaining soldiers try to flee but are overtaken in the plains of Jericho. The king is brought before Nebuchadressar as a rebel. The retribution the king of Babylon exacts upon poor Zedekiah is truly terrible. His sons are slaughtered before him, and then he blinded. He is hauled off to prison in Babylon to die there. The city is burned and its walls are leveled. The remaining persons of status are rounded up to be taken into exile in Babylon. The poor who remain, "who owned nothing," are given vineyards and fields (39:10) by Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, who appears not to have been a bad sort—their descendents will still be there when the exiles return, the Palestinians of their day. Jeremiah is spared and treated kindly by the Babylonian king, who through Nebuzaradan, is given his
freedom. And Jeremiah in his turn remembers with kindness the Ethiopian eunuch who had had him pulled from the muddy cistern. He sends Ebed-melech assurance that because he trusted in the LORD, his life will be spared as a prize of war (39:18).
The Babylonian captain of the guard then offers Jeremiah a choice—to go with him to Babylon where he will be well cared for or to "go wherever [he thinks] it good and right to go" (40:4). Jeremiah chooses to remain with Gedaliah, a Jew who has been appointed governor of the land, "among the people who were left in the land" (40:6). Gedaliah sets up his headquarters at the ancient tribal meeting place of Mizpah, and other Judeans who had been scattered in neighboring lands come back to the land at his invitation, and from the depopulated land they gather "wine and summer fruits in great abundance" (40:12).
Then there is an insurrection led by one Ishmael "of the royal family, one of the officers of the king," assassinates Gedaliah and kills "all the Judeans who were with Gedaliah at Mizpah, and the Chaldean soldiers who happened to be there" (41:3)—this is an open act of rebellion against the king of Babylon. Then he goes on to massacre a group of eighty men from the north who had come to worship "at the temple of the LORD" (41:5)—apparently uninformed regarding its destruction. Ishmael filled a cistern that King Asa had dug many years before with the bodies of those he had slaughtered. But his rebellion is short-lived. He is confronted by another officer, Johanan son of Kareah, who had been an official of the governor Gedaliah. Ishmael flees, and Johanan gathers the people who had been taken captive by Ishmael, "the king's daughters and all the people who were left at Mizpah," and sets out, "intending to go to Egypt," because
everyone was afraid of what would happen when the Chaldeans heard that Ishmael had killed Gedaliah, "whom the king of Babylon had made governor over the land" (41:17).