Jeremiahchapter 38
28 verses · BSBJeremiah book hub →
Speaks with:Jeremiah 37×10Jeremiah 38×6Jeremiah 39×3Jeremiah 21×2Jeremiah 26×2Romans 12×2
Summary
Chapter summary
Shephatiah, Gedaliah, Jucal, and Pashhur demand the prophet's death for weakening the hands of the soldiers; the king says, He is in your hand: I am not he that can do anything against you. They lower Jeremiah by cords into Malchijah's cistern, where there is no water but mire, and he sinks in it. Ebed-melech the Ethiopian eunuch goes straight to Zedekiah at the gate of Benjamin and gets thirty men, then lets down old rags and worn-out garments for Jeremiah to put under his armholes beneath the cords. In secret conference the prophet begs the king: go forth to the princes of Babylon and live, and this city will not be burned. Zedekiah, afraid of the deserters, will not.
Context
Prophecy · Jeremiah — Jeremiah overview
- A. 1–13 Cast into the Miry Dungeon; Ebed-melech's Rags and Cords
- B. 14–28 Go Forth and Live: a Secret Word at the Third Entry
The outline
A.Cast into the Miry Dungeon; Ebed-melech's Rags and Cordsvv. 1 to 13
Read vv. 1 to 13 →B.Go Forth and Live: a Secret Word at the Third Entryvv. 14 to 28
Read vv. 14 to 28 →
The world behind this chapter
Jeremiah 38The history
Four officials demand Jeremiah's death, and two of them have left their names in the ground. Excavations in the City of David have produced a clay seal impression reading belonging to Yehuchal son of Shelemyahu, and another reading belonging to Gedalyahu son of Pashhur — the same two names, with the same fathers' names, as Jehucal son of Shelemiah and Gedaliah son of Pashhur in this chapter's opening verse. Both were found in controlled excavation in the ruins of that period.
Their complaint is a reasonable one from a general's point of view: this man is weakening the hands of the soldiers by telling them the city will fall. In any war that is a shooting offence, and the king, who is afraid of his own officers, tells them he cannot stop them.
The cistern of Malchiah the king's son is described precisely: they let him down with ropes, there was no water in it, only mud, and he sank in the mud. A Judean cistern was a bottle-shaped pit cut in rock with a narrow mouth and plastered sides — impossible to climb out of, and at the end of a dry siege it would hold exactly what the text says.
The rescue is done by an Ethiopian court official named Ebed-melech, who goes to the king at the Benjamin Gate, gets thirty men, and thinks to fetch old rags and worn-out clothes from a storeroom so the ropes will not cut the prophet's armpits as they haul him out. That detail about the padding is one of the small mercies the Bible bothers to record.
What it meant to them
The first hearers knew the men in this chapter. The seal impressions we now dig up were the business cards of the officials who dropped a prophet in a cistern.
And the one who pulled him out was a foreigner from Africa, not a Judean. The chapter ends with a promise made specifically to him: you shall not be given into the hands of the men you fear, because you have put your trust in me.
Sources cited
- Eilat Mazar, Discovering the Solomonic Wall in Jerusalem
- Walton, Matthews and Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Jeremiah 38. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.