Life Lies Outside the Defended City

Both envoys reappear. This Pashur is among the princes who later demand Jeremiah’s death (38:1–4). Zephaniah son of Maaseiah was the “second priest”, who read a hostile letter aloud to Jeremiah (29:25–29), was sent to him again by Zedekiah (37:3), and was executed by the Babylonians at Riblah (52:24–27).

Nebuchadrezzar is named here for the first time in the book; the spelling with an r is closer to the Babylonian Nabu-kudurri-usur. “Go up from us” is the phrase for an army lifting a siege. Zedekiah is hoping for a repeat of 701 BC, when Sennacherib’s army withdrew from Hezekiah’s Jerusalem (2 Kings 19:35–36).

The answer comes back at once, with no recorded prayer or waiting. When the remnant later asks him to enquire, Jeremiah waits ten days for the word (42:7). Here the reply seems already in hand; the king is simply told what has been said before.

The Chaldeans are named for the first time, the people of southern Mesopotamia whose dynasty now ruled Babylon. “Turn back the weapons” pictures Judah’s soldiers fighting outside the walls driven in through the gates. What is “assembled into the midst” may be the weapons or the besiegers; the Hebrew allows either.

Deuteronomy speaks of the exodus as done “by a mighty hand, and by a stretched out arm” (Deuteronomy 4:34, 26:8). Here the adjectives are swapped, an outstretched hand and a strong arm. The three words for wrath, anger, fury and great indignation, are the triple of Deuteronomy 29:28, where the LORD roots Israel out of the land.

Beasts are included because livestock were driven inside the walls when a siege began, and packed people and animals were where plague started. Of the three evils, pestilence alone is called “great”, and it strikes first.

Zedekiah is named first in the list of those handed over. The book records the fulfilment in 39:5–7: his sons killed before his eyes at Riblah, then his eyes put out. The three refusals, spare, pity and mercy, were spoken by God in 13:14; now the same absence of mercy belongs to Nebuchadrezzar.

The words quote the covenant choice of Deuteronomy 30:15 and 30:19, “I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil”. There the way of life meant obedience in the land. Here, astonishingly, it means walking out of the capital to the enemy.

“Falleth to” is the term for deserting. In 37:13 a sentry arrests Jeremiah with exactly this charge, “Thou fallest away to the Chaldeans”, and in 38:19 Zedekiah admits he fears the Jews who have already gone over. The advice of this verse is repeated almost verbatim in 38:2.

“Set my face against” is the language of Leviticus 17:10 and 20:3–6, where God sets his face against an individual offender and cuts him off. “For evil, and not for good” recurs in 39:16 and 44:27. The burning is recorded in 52:13.

The heading opens a collection addressed to the royal household that runs through 23:8, with oracles on three kings in turn: Shallum, Jehoiakim and Coniah. “The house of the king” means the whole court, not only the man on the throne.

Kings heard cases at the gate early in the day; Absalom won the people’s hearts by rising early to stand at the gate and offer the judgment the king was not giving (2 Samuel 15:2–6). “Him that is spoiled” is the robbed man. The same command is repeated in 22:3.

Jerusalem stood on ridges walled in by the Kidron and Hinnom valleys, defensible on three sides, and “inhabitant” is feminine, the city addressed as a woman. The Jebusites once made the same boast to David, that the blind and lame could hold the place (2 Samuel 5:6), and they lost it.

“Forest” may point to the royal buildings: Solomon’s great cedar hall was called “the house of the forest of Lebanon” (1 Kings 7:2), and 22:7 speaks of cutting down the palace’s “choice cedars”. A fire in a cedar-panelled city spreads to everything round about.