Jeremiah 38: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Four of the king's officials hear Jeremiah telling the people that anyone who stays in Jerusalem will die, while anyone who surrenders to the Babylonians will live. They get King Zedekiah's permission to throw Jeremiah into a muddy cistern, and Ebed-melech, a foreign official in the palace, persuades the king to have him pulled out. Zedekiah then meets Jeremiah in secret and hears that surrendering will spare the city and his household, while refusing means the city burns and he is captured. The king asks Jeremiah to keep the meeting secret, and Jeremiah stays in the guard's courtyard until Jerusalem falls.

Claim by Claim

1. 38:1
   • Shephatiah son of Mattan heard the words Jeremiah was speaking to all the people
   • Gedaliah son of Pashhur heard the words Jeremiah was speaking to all the people
   • Jucal son of Shelemiah heard the words Jeremiah was speaking to all the people
   • Pashhur son of Malchiah heard the words Jeremiah was speaking to all the people
   • Jeremiah had been speaking these words to all the people
2. 38:2
   • Jeremiah said this was what the LORD said
   • The LORD said whoever stays in this city will die by the sword, by famine, and by plague
   • The LORD said whoever goes out to the Chaldeans will live
   • The LORD said such a person will have his own life as spoil and will live
3. 38:3
   • Jeremiah said this was what the LORD said
   • The LORD said this city will certainly be given into the hand of the army of the king of Babylon
   • The LORD said the king of Babylon will capture the city
4. 38:4
   • The officials said to the king that this man should be put to death
   • The officials said Jeremiah was weakening the hands of the fighting men remaining in the city
   • The officials said Jeremiah was weakening the hands of all the people
   • The officials said he did this by speaking such words to them
   • The officials said this man was not seeking the welfare of this people
   • The officials said this man was seeking their harm
5. 38:5
   • King Zedekiah said Jeremiah was in their hand
   • King Zedekiah said the king could do nothing against them
6. 38:6
   • They took Jeremiah
   • They threw him into the cistern of Malchiah the king's son
   • The cistern was in the court of the guard
   • They let Jeremiah down with ropes
   • There was no water in the cistern, only mud
   • Jeremiah sank into the mud
7. 38:7
   • Ebed-melech the Cushite was a eunuch or court official in the king's house
   • Ebed-melech heard that they had put Jeremiah into the cistern
   • The king was sitting in the Benjamin Gate at that time
8. 38:8
   • Ebed-melech went out from the king's house
   • Ebed-melech spoke to the king
9. 38:9
   • Ebed-melech addressed the king as his lord
   • Ebed-melech said these men had done evil in all they had done to Jeremiah the prophet
   • Ebed-melech said they had thrown Jeremiah into the cistern
   • Ebed-melech said Jeremiah would die where he was because of the famine
   • Ebed-melech said there was no more bread in the city
10. 38:10
    • The king commanded Ebed-melech the Cushite
    • The king told him to take thirty men with him from there
    • The king told him to lift Jeremiah the prophet up out of the cistern before he died
11. 38:11
    • Ebed-melech took the men with him
    • Ebed-melech went into the king's house to a place under the storehouse
    • Ebed-melech took worn-out rags and worn-out clothes from there
    • Ebed-melech let them down by ropes to Jeremiah in the cistern
12. 38:12
    • Ebed-melech the Cushite spoke to Jeremiah
    • Ebed-melech told Jeremiah to put the worn-out rags and clothes under his armpits beneath the ropes
    • Jeremiah did so
13. 38:13
    • They drew Jeremiah up with the ropes
    • They lifted him out of the cistern
    • Jeremiah remained in the court of the guard
14. 38:14
    • King Zedekiah sent and had Jeremiah the prophet brought to him
    • The meeting was at the third entrance in the house of the LORD
    • The king said to Jeremiah that he was asking him something
    • The king told Jeremiah to hide nothing from him
15. 38:15
    • Jeremiah said to Zedekiah that if he told him, Zedekiah would surely put him to death
    • Jeremiah said that if he gave Zedekiah counsel, Zedekiah would not listen to him
16. 38:16
    • King Zedekiah swore secretly to Jeremiah
    • Zedekiah swore by the life of the LORD
    • Zedekiah said the LORD made this soul for them
    • Zedekiah swore he would not put Jeremiah to death
    • Zedekiah swore he would not give Jeremiah into the hand of the men who sought his life
17. 38:17
    • Jeremiah said to Zedekiah that this was what the LORD said
    • The speaker was identified as the LORD, the God of hosts, the God of Israel
    • The LORD said that if Zedekiah went out to the officers of the king of Babylon, his life would be spared
    • The LORD said that in that case this city would not be burned with fire
    • The LORD said that in that case Zedekiah and his household would live
18. 38:18
    • The LORD said that if Zedekiah did not go out to the officers of the king of Babylon, this city would be given into the hand of the Chaldeans
    • The LORD said the Chaldeans would burn the city with fire
    • The LORD said Zedekiah would not escape from their hand
19. 38:19
    • King Zedekiah said to Jeremiah that he was afraid of the Jews who had deserted to the Chaldeans
    • Zedekiah said he feared being handed over to those Jews
    • Zedekiah said he feared they would abuse him
20. 38:20
    • Jeremiah said they would not hand Zedekiah over
    • Jeremiah urged Zedekiah to obey the voice of the LORD in what Jeremiah was telling him
    • Jeremiah said that then it would go well with Zedekiah
    • Jeremiah said that then Zedekiah's life would be spared
21. 38:21
    • Jeremiah said that if Zedekiah refused to go out, this was the word the LORD had shown him
22. 38:22
    • Jeremiah said all the women remaining in the house of the king of Judah would be brought out to the officers of the king of Babylon
    • Jeremiah said those women would say that Zedekiah's trusted friends had misled him
    • Jeremiah said those women would say those friends had prevailed against him
    • Jeremiah said those women would say Zedekiah's feet were sunk in the mud
    • Jeremiah said those women would say they had turned back and away
23. 38:23
    • Jeremiah said all Zedekiah's wives and children would be brought out to the Chaldeans
    • Jeremiah said Zedekiah would not escape from their hand
    • Jeremiah said Zedekiah would be seized by the hand of the king of Babylon
    • Jeremiah said Zedekiah would cause this city to be burned with fire
24. 38:24
    • Zedekiah said to Jeremiah that no one should know of these words
    • Zedekiah said that then Jeremiah would not die
25. 38:25
    • Zedekiah said the officials might hear that he had spoken with Jeremiah
    • Zedekiah said they would come to Jeremiah
    • Zedekiah said they would demand that Jeremiah tell them what he had said to the king
    • Zedekiah said they would tell Jeremiah not to hide it from them
    • Zedekiah said they would promise not to put Jeremiah to death
    • Zedekiah said they would ask what the king had said to Jeremiah
26. 38:26
    • Zedekiah told Jeremiah to say to them that he had presented his supplication before the king
    • Zedekiah told Jeremiah to say the request was that the king not send him back to Jonathan's house to die there
27. 38:27
    • All the officials came to Jeremiah
    • The officials questioned him
    • Jeremiah told them according to all the words the king had commanded
    • The officials stopped speaking with him
    • The matter had not been overheard
28. 38:28
    • Jeremiah stayed in the court of the guard until the day Jerusalem was captured
    • Jeremiah was there when Jerusalem was captured

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

38:1

This chapter takes place during the final Babylonian siege of Jerusalem, around 588 to 587 BC. Zedekiah was Judah's last king, put on the throne by Babylon itself and then in rebellion against it, so the city was surrounded and cut off while these arguments were going on inside it. The four men named here are royal officials, part of the court circle around the king.

38:2

The Chaldeans were the ruling people of Babylon, the empire based in southern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq); in Jeremiah the word is used interchangeably with "Babylonians." At this moment their army was besieging Jerusalem. "Sword, hunger, and disease" is a set phrase Jeremiah uses repeatedly: death in the fighting, starvation once a besieged city's food runs out, and the epidemics that follow crowding and hunger. "Escape with his own life and nothing more" translates a Hebrew image, his life will be the only plunder he carries off, the way a soldier carries off spoil.

38:3

The king of Babylon here is Nebuchadnezzar II, who ruled from 605 to 562 BC and had already deported part of Jerusalem's population in 597 BC.

38:4

The King James "princes" does not mean the king's sons. It means the leading officials and nobles of the government, the men who actually ran the city. "He weakeneth the hands" is a Hebrew idiom for destroying someone's nerve or will to fight; the officials are accusing Jeremiah of demoralizing the defenders. Their charge is not really religious. Telling soldiers to desert to the enemy in the middle of a siege was treason, and they are asking for the penalty that treason carried.

38:5

Zedekiah was the last king of Judah. Nebuchadnezzar had placed him on the throne as a subject ruler after deposing his nephew in 597 BC, and he later rebelled. His remark that the king "cannot do anything to stop you" reflects how little authority he held against his own officials, who came from the leading families of the city.

38:6

The "pit" is a cistern: a bottle-shaped tank cut down into rock, narrow at the mouth and wide below, used to store rainwater. After a long siege it held only the silt at the bottom. Its shape made it impossible to climb out of unaided. The Hebrew phrase behind "Malchiah, the king's son" can be read either as a description (a royal prince) or as an official court title for a member of the royal household; the King James translators instead took it as a personal name, "Hammelech." The "courtyard of the guard" was an open detention area attached to the palace, where a prisoner could receive visitors and food, not a cell.

38:7

Cush was the kingdom south of Egypt, in what is now northern Sudan; older translations render it "Ethiopia." Ebed-melech was therefore a foreigner at the Judean court. His name means "servant of the king," which may be a title rather than a birth name. The word behind "official" is the Hebrew term for a eunuch, used both literally of castrated palace servants and more broadly of high court officers. The city gate was the place where a king or elders sat to hear petitions and give judgment, so Ebed-melech knows where to find him and can approach him publicly.

38:9

Jerusalem had been under Babylonian siege for months; the city's grain was gone. The point of the appeal is that Jeremiah cannot be fed even if left alive, since no one had bread to lower to him.

38:10

"Thirty men" is what the standard Hebrew text says; a few manuscripts read "three," which fits the task better. If thirty is correct, the escort was likely protection against the officials who had put Jeremiah in the cistern.

38:11

A "clout" is an old English word for a cloth, patch or rag, so "old cast clouts" means discarded scraps of cloth. The room under the treasury or storehouse would be where worn-out palace textiles were kept for reuse.

38:12

"Armholes" means armpits. The rags were padding, so the ropes would not cut into Jeremiah while the men hauled him up.

38:14

The palace and the temple stood in the same complex, so the king could move between them privately. Which door "the third entrance" was is no longer known.

38:16

"As surely as the LORD lives" was the standard formula for a binding oath, calling on God as the witness who would enforce it. Zedekiah swears it secretly because his own officials were the men Jeremiah feared.

38:17

"The God of armies" renders the Hebrew title usually given as "the LORD of hosts", the hosts being either heavenly armies or the armies of Israel. "Your household" means the royal family and everyone dependent on it.

38:19

During the siege a steady stream of people in Jerusalem had deserted to the Babylonian side, exactly as Jeremiah urged in verse 2. Zedekiah fears that if he surrenders, the Babylonians will hand him over to these defectors, his own former subjects, who had reason to resent the king whose rebellion brought the siege. The verb behind "treat me cruelly" covers physical abuse as well as mockery.

38:22

The women of the royal household (wives, secondary wives and female servants) would be taken as part of the victor's property, which was also how a new ruler publicly claimed a defeated king's position. Their words are a short taunt-song. "Your trusted friends" translates a Hebrew phrase, literally "the men of your peace," meaning close allies and advisers. "Your feet are stuck in the mud" pointedly repeats what had just happened to Jeremiah in the cistern.

38:23

The Hebrew of the last clause can be read either as "you will burn this city with fire" (that is, your refusal will be what causes it) or, with a small change of vowels found in some ancient versions, "this city will be burned with fire." The rendering keeps the first sense.

38:26

Jonathan was a royal secretary whose house had been converted into a lockup. Jeremiah had been held there earlier in an underground cell and had begged Zedekiah not to send him back (Jeremiah 37:15–20). The cover story is true as far as it goes (he had made that request) without touching what the king had actually asked him.

38:27

"The matter was not perceived" means no one had found out what was really said between the king and Jeremiah.

38:28

Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians in 586 BC, after roughly eighteen months of siege. The repeated closing line is unusual; many scholars read it as the seam where this account joins the narrative of the city's capture that follows.