Cords, Worn Cloth, and One Last Audience

Two of these four had carried the king’s requests to Jeremiah: Jucal in 37:3, Pashur son of Malchiah in 21:1. Clay seal impressions reading “Yehukal son of Shelemyahu” and “Gedalyahu son of Pashhur” were excavated in the City of David in 2005 and 2008, names matching two men in this verse.

“He shall have his life for a prey” is the language of war booty: the one who surrenders will come away with nothing but his life, and that will be his plunder. The verse repeats 21:9 almost exactly, so the officials are quoting a message Jeremiah had given more than once.

The officials quote a second saying, with its own “Thus saith the LORD”. Verse 2 was the offer, this is the verdict. The Hebrew doubles the verb, given it shall be given, the grammar of certainty.

To “weaken the hands” is to sap morale. One of the Lachish letters, written in these same years, uses the same phrase of some officials in Jerusalem whose words were weakening the hands of the land. The princes’ charge turns on two words, shalom, welfare, and ra’ah, harm.

A king speaks of himself in the third person as powerless: “the king is not he that can do any thing against you.” The sentence may be a shrug, or a courtier’s honest description of a monarch who owed his throne to Babylon and his daily survival to his officials.

The cistern belonged to Malchiah “son of Hammelech”, a royal prince, and one of the accusers in verse 1 is Pashur son of Malchiah, so Jeremiah may have been put in the pit of his accuser’s father. Lamentations 3:53–55 speaks of a life “cut off in the dungeon” and a cry “out of the low dungeon”.

Ebed-melech means “servant of the king”, and may be a title rather than a personal name. “Ethiopian” is Cushite, from the upper Nile. The king is “sitting in the gate of Benjamin”, the place where cases were heard, and the gate where Jeremiah was arrested in 37:13.

He leaves the palace and goes to the king in the gate, a public place, rather than waiting for a private word inside. A foreign court servant speaking against the princes in the open was taking a real risk, which 39:18 acknowledges when it promises him his life.

“These men have done evil” names the princes as wrongdoers in front of the king who had just handed Jeremiah to them. “There is no more bread in the city” suggests the ration of 37:21 has stopped reaching the prisoner; a man at the bottom of a cistern can easily be forgotten.

Thirty men to lift one prisoner seemed excessive to some scholars, who suggest the text first read “three”, since the two Hebrew words differ by a single letter. Others think thirty was deliberate: a large party could not be stopped by the princes. The Hebrew as it stands says thirty.

The rags come from a room “under the treasury”, a storeroom in the palace. “Cast clouts” renders sechavot, from a verb meaning to drag, cloths worn out and dragged about; “clout” in 1611 English meant a patch or a scrap of cloth. Ebed-melech does not ask permission for these.

“Armholes” is the King James word for armpits, used also in Ezekiel 13:18. The cords would have gone around his chest, and the padding sits where the weight would bite. “And Jeremiah did so”: the man who spends the book giving commands follows one without a word.

“Drew up” is mashak, the verb used when Joseph’s brothers “drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit” (Genesis 37:28), and the pit in both places is a bor, a dry cistern. Joseph came up to be sold; Jeremiah comes up to remain a prisoner in the court.

The “third entry” of the temple is mentioned nowhere else, and its location is unknown; it may have been a private royal passage. The king’s “hide nothing from me” will be matched word for word by the princes in verse 25, “hide it not from us”.

Both questions are framed in Hebrew to expect the answer yes: surely you will kill me; surely you will not listen. Jeremiah has already been beaten, imprisoned, and dropped in a pit on the officials’ word, so he states the danger before he says anything else.

“As the LORD liveth, that made us this soul” is an oath found only here, calling on God as the giver of life, nefesh. The king swears by the maker of life not to take Jeremiah’s nefesh, nor hand him to men who “seek” his nefesh. The oath is sworn in secret.

Jeremiah uses the full title, the LORD, the God of hosts, the God of Israel. The surrender is to “the king of Babylon’s princes”: Nebuchadnezzar was not at the siege but at Riblah in Syria (39:5), and his generals, named in 39:3, commanded outside the walls.

“Thou shalt not escape out of their hand” repeats the words of 32:4 and 34:3. The event is told in 39:4–5: Zedekiah fled by night through the gate between the two walls and was overtaken in the plains of Jericho.

The defectors were numerous enough to form a group; 39:9 and 52:15 count them among the people carried away. “Mock” is hitallel, a harsh verb for toying with someone, used in Judges 19:25 for the men who abused the Levite’s concubine. The king fears his own countrymen more than Babylon.

“They shall not deliver thee” is two words in Hebrew. “Obey the voice” is shama beqol again, the phrase on which the whole book turns, and “it shall be well unto thee” is Deuteronomy’s promise attached to obedience (Deuteronomy 4:40). Jeremiah pleads, “I beseech thee”.

“Shewed me” marks what follows as something seen: Jeremiah has been given a scene, not only a sentence. The Book of Jeremiah uses the same verb for his visions of the almond rod and the boiling pot (1:11–13).

The women’s taunt has the rhythm of a lament. “Thy friends” is literally “the men of thy peace”, the phrase Jeremiah used of his own betrayers in 20:10, “all my familiars”. “Set thee on” means incited or misled. It is the king’s allies, not his enemies, who have sunk his feet.

The Hebrew literally says “thou shalt burn this city”, making Zedekiah the one who sets the fire by refusing to surrender. Some Hebrew manuscripts and the ancient versions soften it to “this city shall be burned”. The wives and children are fulfilled grimly in 39:6.

The king’s promise carries a threat inside it: keep this quiet, and you will not die. The man who said he could do nothing against the princes (verse 5) still holds Jeremiah’s life in his hands.

The princes offer exactly the king’s terms: tell us, hide nothing, and we will not kill you. Jeremiah is caught between two parties each promising his life in exchange for the same conversation.

The cover account is plausible because it concerns the princes’ own act: they had put him in Jonathan’s house (37:15). It rests on something Jeremiah really did say (37:20). He is to say it and nothing more.

“The matter was not perceived” is literally “the word was not heard”. In a book whose whole charge against Judah is that the word was not heard, the one time a word goes unheard, it saves the prophet.

The final clause, “and he was there when Jerusalem was taken”, is abrupt in Hebrew and reads like the opening of the next episode. Chapter 39 then breaks off to give the dates of the siege before returning to what happened on that day.