Jeremiah 38

Today’s Passage: Jeremiah 38

We come now to the darkest hour of Jeremiah’s long imprisonment, in the last days of a doomed Jerusalem with Babylon’s armies closing around the walls. The prophet has been saying, plainly and without flattery, that the city cannot be saved by fighting and that anyone who surrenders to the Chaldeans will live. To the officials this sounds like treason, so they seize him and lower him into a muddy cistern to die of hunger, and there he sinks into the mire. But God has a rescuer waiting in an unlikely place: Ebed-melech, a foreigner from Cush and a servant in the palace, who dares to speak up before the king and, with old rags to cushion the ropes, lifts the prophet gently out of the pit. Then King Zedekiah calls for Jeremiah one last time, in secret, and hears again the only word that could save him, and again cannot bring himself to obey it. Watch, as you read, how the courage of one unexpected man saves a life, and how the fear of man ties the hands of a king.

As you read, hold this: God preserves His servant by unexpected hands, while the fear of man ruins the one who will not trust the LORD.

Jeremiah 38:1–4 (BSB)

¹ Now Shephatiah son of Mattan, Gedaliah son of Pashhur, Jucal son of Shelemiah, and Pashhur son of Malchijah heard that Jeremiah had been telling all the people: ² “This is what the LORD says: Whoever stays in this city will die by sword and famine and plague, but whoever surrenders to the Chaldeans will live; he will retain his life like a spoil of war, and he will live. ³ This is what the LORD says: This city will surely be delivered into the hands of the army of the king of Babylon, and he will capture it.” ⁴ Then the officials said to the king, “This man ought to die, for he is discouraging the warriors who remain in this city, as well as all the people, by speaking such words to them; this man is not seeking the well-being of these people, but their ruin.”

Notice first what Jeremiah is actually saying, because it is the very opposite of what his accusers claim. He is not gloating over the city’s fall; he is showing his people the one door that is still open to life. Stay and you will die, he says, but surrender and you will live. That is mercy dressed up as bad news, the plain truth that only love would dare to speak when everyone wants to hear a comfortable lie. But the officials hear only a man weakening their soldiers’ resolve, and so they twist his errand entirely: this man is not seeking the well-being of the people, but their ruin. It is one of the sad turns of a hardened heart, that it can look straight at the one person telling it the truth and call him the enemy. The prophet who was trying to save them is condemned as the one who would destroy them.

Jeremiah 38:5–6 (BSB)

⁵ “Here he is,” replied King Zedekiah. “He is in your hands, since the king can do nothing to stop you.” ⁶ So they took Jeremiah and dropped him into the cistern of Malchiah, the king’s son, which was in the courtyard of the guard. They lowered Jeremiah with ropes into the cistern, which had no water but only mud, and Jeremiah sank down into the mud.

Here we meet Zedekiah for the first time, and we already know all we need to know about him. He is a king in name only. He is in your hands, he says, since the king can do nothing to stop you. Think of it: the man on the throne, the one person with the authority to spare a life, throws up his hands and lets his own officials do as they please. This is what the fear of man looks like when it sits on a throne. And so they lower the prophet into the pit, and the writer lingers on that dreadful last detail, that there was no water in the cistern (בּוֹר) bor, pronounced BORE. Strong's H953, a pit, well, cistern, dungeon. This is a word that echoes through the Scriptures with a heavy sound. The same bor is the pit into which Joseph’s brothers threw him before he was sold, and the psalmists reach for it again and again to describe the very edge of the grave, crying out that they are counted among those who go down to the pit. So when Jeremiah is lowered into the bor, we are meant to feel more than the physical horror of the mud and the dark. He is a man sunk to the bottom of all human hope, given up for dead by the powers of the city. And that is precisely the place where God so often does His clearest work, reaching down into the pit no one else will touch to lift out the servant He has not abandoned. The depth of the pit only makes the mercy of the rescue shine the brighter. but only mud, and Jeremiah sank down into the mire. It is a picture of utter helplessness. The faithful servant of God, having spoken nothing but the truth, is left sinking in the dark to die. And yet, as we are about to see, the LORD has not forgotten the man in the pit.

Jeremiah 38:7–9 (BSB)

⁷ Now Ebed-melech the Cushite, a court official in the royal palace, heard that Jeremiah had been put into the cistern. While the king was sitting at the Gate of Benjamin, ⁸ Ebed-melech went out from the king’s palace and said to the king, ⁹ “My lord the king, these men have acted wickedly in all that they have done to Jeremiah the prophet. They have dropped him into the cistern, where he will starve to death, for there is no more bread in the city.”

And now God’s rescuer steps forward, and see who he is. Not one of Judah’s own princes, not a priest or a fellow prophet, but Ebed-melech the Cushite, a foreigner from a distant land serving in the palace. The very people who should have honored the word of the LORD had thrown His prophet in a pit, while an outsider, a man from the nations, has the courage and the compassion to do what is right. He goes straight to the king, out in the open at the Gate of Benjamin where all could hear, and he does not soften the truth: these men have acted wickedly. There is a holy boldness in that. To speak up for a condemned man before a weak king surrounded by murderous officials was to risk his own neck. But conscience before God made him brave, and God had placed him exactly where he needed to be, at exactly the right hour, to save the life of His servant. This is how the LORD works, tucking a faithful man into a foreign court to be ready when the moment comes.

Jeremiah 38:10–13 (BSB)

¹⁰ So the king commanded Ebed-melech the Cushite, “Take thirty men from here with you and pull Jeremiah the prophet out of the cistern before he dies.” ¹¹ Then Ebed-melech took the men with him and went to the king’s palace, to a place below the storehouse. From there he took old rags and worn-out clothes and lowered them with ropes to Jeremiah in the cistern. ¹² Ebed-melech the Cushite cried out to Jeremiah, “Put these worn-out rags and clothes under your arms to pad the ropes.” Jeremiah did so, ¹³ and they pulled him up with the ropes and lifted him out of the cistern. And Jeremiah remained in the courtyard of the guard.

Watch the tenderness in the rescue, because the Bible does not have to tell us this, and yet it does. Ebed-melech does not simply throw down a rope and haul the old prophet up by his arms, which would have cut and bruised him. He first gathers old rags and worn-out clothes, and he calls down into the pit with the gentlest of instructions: put these under your arms to pad the ropes. Here is a man who thinks of the comfort of the one he is saving even in the hurry of the rescue. It is a small kindness, and it is exactly the kind of thing love always notices. God’s deliverance often comes to us wrapped in such gentleness, through the hands of people who trouble themselves over the little details of our pain. The same king who could do nothing to stop the cruelty now sends thirty men to undo it, and the prophet is lifted, softly and safely, out of the mud and back into the light.

Jeremiah 38:14–16 (BSB)

¹⁴ Then King Zedekiah sent for Jeremiah the prophet and received him at the third entrance to the house of the LORD. “I am going to ask you something,” said the king to Jeremiah. “Do not hide anything from me.” ¹⁵ “If I tell you,” Jeremiah replied, “you will surely put me to death. And even if I give you advice, you will not listen to me.” ¹⁶ But King Zedekiah swore secretly to Jeremiah, “As surely as the LORD lives, who has given us this life, I will not kill you, nor will I deliver you into the hands of these men who are seeking your life.”

Now comes the last private conversation between these two men, and it is a sad and revealing one. The king wants the truth, and he wants it in secret, whispered in a side entrance where his officials cannot hear. Do not hide anything from me, he pleads. And Jeremiah, who knows this frightened king only too well, answers with weary honesty: if I tell you, you will kill me, and even if I counsel you, you will not listen. There is the whole tragedy in a sentence. It is not that Zedekiah does not know the truth or cannot hear it. It is that he will not act on it. He swears a solemn oath, by the living LORD, to protect the prophet, and he means it in the moment. But an oath is easy for a man ruled by fear; it is the doing that he cannot manage. He wants the word of God the way a sick man wants a cure he is unwilling to swallow.

Jeremiah 38:17–18 (BSB)

¹⁷ Then Jeremiah said to Zedekiah, “This is what the LORD God of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: ‘If you indeed surrender to the officers of the king of Babylon, then you will live, this city will not be burned down, and you and your household will survive. ¹⁸ But if you do not surrender to the officers of the king of Babylon, then this city will be delivered into the hands of the Chaldeans. They will burn it down, and you yourself will not escape their grasp.’”

Jeremiah lays the choice before the king as plainly as it can be laid. There are two roads, and only two, and everything hangs on which one he takes. Surrender, and you will live, your household will survive, and the city will be spared the fire. Refuse, and the city burns and you will not escape. Notice how simple God has made it. This is not a riddle to be puzzled out or a hard commandment beyond the king’s strength. It is a single act of trust: lay down your arms and put yourself in the hands of the LORD’s plainly declared will, and live. The word of God is not asking Zedekiah to be clever or strong or heroic. It is asking him only to believe that God means what He says and to act upon it. The whole future of the king, his family, and his city now rests on whether he will trust the word or fear the consequences of obeying it.

Jeremiah 38:19–23 (BSB)

¹⁹ But King Zedekiah said to Jeremiah, “I am afraid of the Jews who have deserted to the Chaldeans, for the Chaldeans may deliver me into their hands to abuse me.” ²⁰ “They will not hand you over,” Jeremiah replied. “Obey the voice of the LORD in what I am telling you, that it may go well with you and you may live. ²¹ But if you refuse to surrender, this is the word that the LORD has shown me: ²² All the women who remain in the palace of the king of Judah will be brought out to the officials of the king of Babylon, and those women will say: ‘They misled you and overcame you—those trusted friends of yours. Your feet sank into the mire, and they deserted you.’ ²³ All your wives and children will be brought out to the Chaldeans. And you yourself will not escape their grasp, for you will be seized by the king of Babylon, and this city will be burned down.”

And here, in his own words, the king shows us exactly what is holding him back. I am afraid, he says. He is not weighing whether Jeremiah’s word is true; he is afraid of what men might do to him, afraid of the mockery of the deserters, afraid of being shamed. So Jeremiah presses the one remedy: obey the voice of the LORD, that it may go well with you and you may live. Fear of man against the voice of God, and the prophet begs him to let the voice of God win. Then he paints the picture of what fear will cost him if it does not. If the king refuses, the palace women will be led out to the enemy singing a bitter little song of betrayal, and hear the haunting phrase they will use: your feet sank into the mire. It is the very image of the pit Jeremiah himself was just pulled from. The king who would not obey will find himself sunk in a mire of his own, forsaken by the very friends he feared, his wives and children handed over and the city in flames. Fear promised him safety, and this is the ruin it was actually leading him toward.

Jeremiah 38:24–28 (BSB)

²⁴ Then Zedekiah warned Jeremiah, “Do not let anyone know about this conversation, or you will die. ²⁵ If the officials hear that I have spoken with you, and they come and demand of you, ‘Tell us what you said to the king and what he said to you; do not hide it from us, or we will kill you,’ ²⁶ then tell them, ‘I was presenting to the king my petition that he not return me to the house of Jonathan to die there.’” ²⁷ When all the officials came to Jeremiah and questioned him, he relayed to them the exact words the king had commanded him to say. So they said no more to him, for no one had overheard the conversation. ²⁸ And Jeremiah remained in the courtyard of the guard until the day Jerusalem was captured.

And so the interview ends, not with a king resolved to obey, but with a king anxious to hide that the conversation ever happened. Do not let anyone know, he says, for the fear that ruled him from the start rules him to the finish. He is more concerned with keeping his officials from finding out than with saving his own life and city. What a picture of a soul enslaved by the fear of man, so busy managing what people think that it forgets to do the one thing God has asked. Jeremiah, for his part, guards the king’s secret and stays where he is, waiting in the courtyard of the guard until the day the city falls. The chapter closes on that quiet, ominous line, until the day Jerusalem was captured, and we know that everything Jeremiah warned would happen, happened, because a frightened man could not bring himself to trust the plain word of the LORD.