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37. Jeremiah in Prison

¹ Zedekiah son of Josiah was made king of Judah by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon; he reigned in place of Jehoiachin Hebrew Koniah, a variant of Jehoiachin son of Jehoiakim. ² Neither he nor his attendants nor the people of the land paid any attention to the words the LORD had spoken through Jeremiah the prophet.

³ King Zedekiah, however, sent Jehukal son of Shelemiah with the priest Zephaniah son of Maaseiah to Jeremiah the prophet with this message: “Please pray to the LORD our God for us.”

⁴ Now Jeremiah was free to come and go among the people, for he had not yet been put in prison. ⁵ Pharaoh’s army had marched out of Egypt, and when the Babylonians Or Chaldeans; also in verses 8, 9, 13 and 14 who were besieging Jerusalem heard the report about them, they withdrew from Jerusalem.

⁶ Then the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah the prophet: ⁷ “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: Tell the king of Judah, who sent you to inquire of me, ‘Pharaoh’s army, which has marched out to support you, will go back to its own land, to Egypt. ⁸ Then the Babylonians will return and attack this city; they will capture it and burn it down.’

⁹ “This is what the LORD says: Do not deceive yourselves, thinking, ‘The Babylonians will surely leave us.’ They will not! ¹⁰ Even if you were to defeat the entire Babylonian Or Chaldean; also in verse 11 army that is attacking you and only wounded men were left in their tents, they would come out and burn this city down.”

¹¹ After the Babylonian army had withdrawn from Jerusalem because of Pharaoh’s army, ¹² Jeremiah started to leave the city to go to the territory of Benjamin to get his share of the property among the people there. ¹³ But when he reached the Benjamin Gate, the captain of the guard, whose name was Irijah son of Shelemiah, the son of Hananiah, arrested him and said, “You are deserting to the Babylonians!”

¹⁴ “That’s not true!” Jeremiah said. “I am not deserting to the Babylonians.” But Irijah would not listen to him; instead, he arrested Jeremiah and brought him to the officials. ¹⁵ They were angry with Jeremiah and had him beaten and imprisoned in the house of Jonathan the secretary, which they had made into a prison.

¹⁶ Jeremiah was put into a vaulted cell in a dungeon, where he remained a long time. ¹⁷ Then King Zedekiah sent for him and had him brought to the palace, where he asked him privately, “Is there any word from the LORD?”

“Yes,” Jeremiah replied, “you will be delivered into the hands of the king of Babylon.”

¹⁸ Then Jeremiah said to King Zedekiah, “What crime have I committed against you or your attendants or this people, that you have put me in prison? ¹⁹ Where are your prophets who prophesied to you, ‘The king of Babylon will not attack you or this land’? ²⁰ But now, my lord the king, please listen. Let me bring my petition before you: Do not send me back to the house of Jonathan the secretary, or I will die there.”

²¹ King Zedekiah then gave orders for Jeremiah to be placed in the courtyard of the guard and given a loaf of bread from the street of the bakers each day until all the bread in the city was gone. So Jeremiah remained in the courtyard of the guard.

The particle כי, ki, is to be taken here as an adverb of time, as I think, though interpreters have not observed this, When Jeremiah, he says, came into the house of the pit or dungeon, or of the prison. The word בור means also sometimes the grave, but is to be taken here for a pit or a deep place: he means that it was a dark and filthy prison. And he adds, and to the dwellings I know not why some have rendered it, “victualling houses;” for the word החניות, echeniot, means narrow prisons, which we call at this day cachots: ¹⁰⁸¹⁰⁸ The versions and the Targ. render the word differently; its meaning was not evidently understood. Blaney gives the best explanation, who renders it “cells.” “The dungeon,” he says, was a deep pit like a well, and near the bottom were scooped niches, or cells, for the lodgement of the prisoners. The word comes from, הנה, to fix, to settle, to lodge; hence the plural noun here means places for prisoners to settle or lodge on, where they could fix themselves, without sinking in the mire at the bottom of the pit, as the case was with Jeremiah on another occasion. See Jeremiah 38:6. That pit, it seems, had no cells. — Ed he was therefore cast into a dungeon, where there were narrow places, that, the holy man had no space either freely to rise or to stand or to sit down, or to he down. Then the Prophet shews that he was so confined by the straitness of the place, that he could hardly sit or lay down or stand erect.; and he says that he was there many days. ¹⁰⁹¹⁰⁹ This paragraph is intermingled in the original with the text; but it has been thought better to introduce it separately. — Ed.

We must notice the circumstances of the case: It was a thing cruel enough in itself, that an innocent man, after having been beaten, should be thrust into prison: but when a dark and deep prison was chosen, and when he was confined to a narrow place, as though he was in fetters, it was a great addition to the indignity offered to him. Since then the holy Prophet was so atrociously treated, let us not think it strange, when the same thing at this day is endured by God’s children, and for the same cause, even for bearing testimony to celestial truth. When the length of time is added, it increased the evil; for he was not retained in prison for a few days or for a month, but until the city was taken; not indeed in that prison, for the king, as we shall presently see, removed him into the ccurt of the prison. He was, however, the second time cast into a filthy prison, as though he was destined to die; thence he was afterwards removed also by the order of the king. But the Prophet says, that he was in that dungeon many days. It now follows —