Today’s Passage: Jeremiah 39
We have come at last to the day the whole book has been leaning toward, the day Jeremiah wept over for forty long years. After a siege that dragged on until the bread ran out, the wall of Jerusalem is finally breached, and the city that would not listen falls to Babylon. King Zedekiah tries to slip away in the night, but he is caught in the plains of Jericho, made to watch the killing of his own sons, and then blinded and dragged off in chains. The palace and the houses are burned, the walls torn down, and the people carried into exile, while only the poorest are left behind with the fields and vineyards. Yet even here, in the smoke and the ruin, the chapter turns to show us two men the LORD does not forget: Jeremiah himself, set free and cared for, and Ebed-melech, promised his very life because he had trusted in God. This is the fall, told soberly, with a thread of mercy running straight through the middle of it.
As you read, hold this: The word God long warned came to pass, and in the same dark hour His faithfulness sheltered everyone who trusted Him.
Context The world of Jeremiah 39
By the time this chapter opens, the armies of Babylon had been camped around Jerusalem for the better part of two years. Nebuchadnezzar had come up in the ninth year of Zedekiah’s reign, and the siege wore on into the eleventh, month after grinding month, until the food inside the walls was gone and the strength of the defenders with it. This was no sudden calamity that fell out of a clear sky. It was the very thing Jeremiah had been sent to warn about since he was a young man, the disaster from the north that the people had laughed off, silenced, and imprisoned him for announcing. Now it stood at the gate, and there was no more time to turn back.
Zedekiah was the last king to sit on David’s throne in Jerusalem, a weak and wavering man who had sworn loyalty to Babylon and then broken his word. When the wall was breached, the treaty-oath he had trampled came due, and the punishment meted out at Riblah followed the brutal custom of the ancient kings. To blind a captured rebel king, and to make the slaughter of his heirs the last thing his eyes ever saw, was Babylon’s way of stamping out a dynasty and warning every other vassal. The Chaldeans, as Scripture often names the Babylonians, then did to the city what conquerors always did: they emptied it of anything worth carrying and left it a broken shell. All of it had been foretold. None of it was an accident.
Jeremiah 39:1–3 (BSB)
¹ In the ninth year of Zedekiah king of Judah, in the tenth month, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon marched against Jerusalem with his entire army and laid siege to the city. ² And on the ninth day of the fourth month of Zedekiah’s eleventh year, the city was breached. ³ Then all the officials of the king of Babylon entered and sat in the Middle Gate: Nergal-sharezer of Samgar, Nebo-sarsekim the Rabsaris, Nergal-sharezer the Rabmag, and all the rest of the officials of the king of Babylon.
Notice how carefully the chapter records the dates, the ninth year, the tenth month, and then the ninth day of the fourth month when the wall finally gave way. This is not the vague language of legend; it is the plain reckoning of history, a man writing down exactly when the thing happened, the way you would mark a day you would never forget. And then comes an image heavy with meaning: the officials of Babylon walk in and sit down in the Middle Gate, taking their seats in the very place where the elders of Judah once sat to judge and to rule. Foreign lords now hold court in the city of God. The reader who has walked the whole book with Jeremiah feels the ground give way here. Everything the prophet said would come, has come.
Jeremiah 39:4–5 (BSB)
⁴ When Zedekiah king of Judah and all the soldiers saw them, they fled. They left the city at night by way of the king’s garden, through the gate between the two walls, and they went out along the route to the Arabah. ⁵ But the army of the Chaldeans pursued them and overtook Zedekiah in the plains of Jericho. They seized him and brought him up to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon at Riblah in the land of Hamath, where he pronounced judgment on him.
Here is a picture of what it looks like to run from a word you should have heeded. Zedekiah does not repent; he flees, slipping out under cover of darkness by a hidden gate, trying to put the desert between himself and the ruin he brought on his people. But you cannot outrun the judgment of God by running from His city. They caught him in the plains of Jericho, of all places, the very stretch of ground where Israel had first entered the land in triumph so many centuries before. Where the story of the promise once began in victory, the story of the kingdom now ends in capture. He is brought before Nebuchadnezzar at Riblah, and sentence is passed. The king who would not bow to the word of the LORD must now stand and hear the verdict of a pagan conqueror.
Jeremiah 39:6–7 (BSB)
⁶ There at Riblah the king of Babylon slaughtered the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes, and he also killed all the nobles of Judah. ⁷ Then he put out Zedekiah’s eyes and bound him with bronze chains to take him to Babylon.
We should not rush past these two verses, and we should not dress them up either. This is a hard and terrible thing, and the Scripture tells it without flinching and without gloating. The last sight granted to Zedekiah’s eyes was the death of his own sons, and then those eyes were put out, so that he would carry that final image into the darkness for the rest of his days, led off to Babylon in bronze chains. There is a fearful truth folded into this horror, and it is this: sin, followed to its end, is never harmless. The people had treated the warnings of God as if they cost nothing, as if His patience were weakness and His word were only noise. Here we see the weight of what they had waved away. The LORD does not speak into the wind. When He warns for forty years and is not heeded, the warning proves to have been true all along, and the truest kindness Jeremiah ever did his nation was to tell them so while there was still time to turn.
Jeremiah 39:8–10 (BSB)
⁸ The Chaldeans set fire to the palace of the king and to the houses of the people, and they broke down the walls of Jerusalem. ⁹ Then Nebuzaradan captain of the guard carried away to Babylon the remnant of the people who had remained in the city, along with the deserters who had defected to him. ¹⁰ But Nebuzaradan left behind in the land of Judah some of the poor people who had no property, and at that time he gave them vineyards and fields.
Now the city itself is undone, stone by stone. The palace burns, the homes of ordinary families burn, and the great walls that had made Jerusalem feel unassailable are pulled down into rubble. The people who survive are marched off into exile under Nebuzaradan, rav-tabbachim, pronounced rahv tah-bah-KHEEM. Strong's H7227, chief of the guard, captain of the executioners/bodyguard. The title given to Nebuzaradan is a striking one. It joins rav, meaning “chief” or “great one,” to tabbachim, which comes from a root that means to slaughter, so that literally it reads something like “chief of the slaughterers.” Long ago the phrase had described the head of the royal kitchen, the master of the butchers, but by this time it had become the name for the captain of the king’s bodyguard, the officer who carried out the sentences of the throne. It is worth pausing over, because it is this very man, the executioner of Babylon, whom God will use in the next verses as an instrument of kindness toward His prophet. The LORD is not confined to gentle hands when He wants to care for His own. He can send protection through the chief of the slaughterers if He pleases, for every ruler and every officer, even the ones who serve a pagan crown, is finally a servant of His purposes. , and the long ache of Babylon begins. And yet, tucked into the very end of this account of loss, there is a small and unexpected mercy. The poorest of the land, the ones who had owned nothing and had nothing worth plundering, are left behind, and into their empty hands are placed vineyards and fields they had never dreamed of possessing. It is a quiet reminder, easy to miss in the smoke, that even when God’s judgment falls in full, His mercy is not wholly withdrawn from the earth. The lowly are lifted a little; something green is left for someone to tend. God is at work even in the wreckage.
Jeremiah 39:11–14 (BSB)
¹¹ Now Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had given orders about Jeremiah through Nebuzaradan captain of the guard, saying, ¹² “Take him, look after him, and do not let any harm come to him; do for him whatever he says.” ¹³ So Nebuzaradan captain of the guard, Nebushazban the Rabsaris, Nergal-sharezer the Rabmag, and all the captains of the king of Babylon ¹⁴ had Jeremiah brought from the courtyard of the guard, and they turned him over to Gedaliah son of Ahikam, the son of Shaphan, to take him home. So Jeremiah remained among his own people.
And now watch the tender turn the chapter takes. For years Jeremiah’s own countrymen had thrown him into a cistern, put him in stocks, and locked him in the courtyard of the guard for telling them the truth they hated. His reward from his own people was chains. But when the smoke clears, it is the king of a foreign empire who gives the order that no harm is to come to him, that he is to be looked after and given whatever he asks. There is something almost overwhelming in this reversal. The word of God had said that Babylon was coming, and the very Babylon that shattered the rebellious was told to guard the faithful. Jeremiah is drawn up out of prison, handed over to the care of a good man named Gedaliah, and left to dwell among his own people. The servant who was despised for his message is quietly sheltered by the hand of the God he served. The LORD does not forget the ones who spoke for Him when it cost them everything.
Jeremiah 39:15–18 (BSB)
¹⁵ And while Jeremiah had been confined in the courtyard of the guard, the word of the LORD had come to him: ¹⁶ “Go and tell Ebed-melech the Cushite that this is what the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: ‘I am about to fulfill My words against this city for harm and not for good, and on that day they will be fulfilled before your eyes. ¹⁷ But I will deliver you on that day, declares the LORD, and you will not be delivered into the hands of the men whom you fear. ¹⁸ For I will surely rescue you so that you do not fall by the sword. Because you have trusted in Me, you will escape with your life like a spoil of war, declares the LORD.’”
The chapter saves its most beautiful word for last, and it is spoken over a man who is easy to overlook. Ebed-melech was a foreigner, a Cushite, a servant in the king’s house, and back in an earlier chapter he had done one brave, kind thing in a fearful time: when Jeremiah was sinking in the mud of a cistern, left to die, this man went to the king and pleaded for him, and let down old rags and ropes so the prophet’s arms would not be chafed as he was lifted out. It was a small mercy, offered at real risk, by a man with little power. And God did not forget it. Now, as the city falls and the sword is loose in the streets, the LORD sends word to Ebed-melech by name: you will not fall, you will escape with your life, and the reason is given plainly, “Because you have trusted in Me.” That is the hinge of the whole story. It was not the courage alone, and not the kindness alone; it was the faith beneath them, a servant’s quiet trust in the God of Israel. In the darkest hour that ever fell on Jerusalem, the LORD stooped to remember one lowly man who had believed Him and done one good thing in fear, and He covered him with His own protection. Here are the twin truths of the chapter meeting at last: the word of judgment came to pass exactly as God had said, and in that very same hour His faithfulness sheltered everyone who trusted Him.
Study notes Going deeper
Everything in this chapter turns on one small phrase spoken over Ebed-melech: “Because you have trusted in Me.” The nobles perished, the king was blinded, the walls came down, and yet a foreign servant with no rank and no army walked out of the ruin alive, kept safe not by his own strength but by the God he had leaned upon. This is one of the great and steady lessons of all Scripture, that the LORD is a shield and a shelter to the soul that hides itself in Him, and that no darkness ever falls so heavy that His care cannot reach through it to the one who trusts. The prophet who wrote this chapter would say the same thing in another place with a picture: the one who trusts in the LORD is like a tree planted by the water, unafraid when the heat comes.
"The LORD is good, a stronghold in the day of distress; He cares for those who trust in Him." Nahum 1:7 (BSB)
Hold those two things together and do not let either one go. God’s warnings are true, and they will surely come to pass, for He does not speak in vain and He is not mocked. And in the very hour His word falls, He knows and keeps and rescues the ones who have trusted Him, remembering even the servant who did one brave, kind thing when he was afraid. Learn the Word, trust the God who keeps every promise both to judge and to save, and give thanks.