The Living Bible (250 page)

Jeremiah
37

Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, did not appoint Coniah (King Jehoiakim’s son) to be the new king of Judah.
*
Instead he chose Zedekiah (son of Josiah).
²
 But neither King Zedekiah nor his officials nor the people who were left in the land listened to what the Lord said through Jeremiah.
³
 Nevertheless, King Zedekiah sent Jehucal (son of Shelemiah) and Zephaniah the priest (son of Maaseiah) to ask Jeremiah to pray for them.
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 (Jeremiah had not been imprisoned yet, so he could come and go as he pleased.)

    
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 When the army of Pharaoh Hophra of Egypt appeared at the southern border of Judah to relieve the besieged city of Jerusalem, the Babylonian army withdrew from Jerusalem to fight the Egyptians.

    
⁶
 Then the Lord sent this message to Jeremiah:
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 “The Lord, the God of Israel, says: Tell the king of Judah, who sent you to ask me what is going to happen, that Pharaoh’s army, though it came here to help you, is about to return in flight to Egypt! The Babylonians shall defeat them and send them scurrying home.
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 These Babylonians shall capture this city and burn it to the ground.
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 Don’t fool yourselves that the Babylonians are gone for good. They aren’t!
¹⁰
 Even if you destroyed the entire Babylonian army until there was only a handful of survivors and they lay wounded in their tents, yet they would stagger out and defeat you and put this city to the torch!”

    
¹¹
 When the Babylonian army set out from Jerusalem to engage Pharaoh’s army in battle,
¹²
 Jeremiah started to leave the city to go to the land of Benjamin, to see the property he had bought.
*
¹³
 But as he was walking through the Benjamin Gate, a sentry arrested him as a traitor, claiming he was defecting to the Babylonians. The guard making the arrest was Irijah (son of Shelemiah, grandson of Hananiah).

    
¹⁴
 “That’s not true,” Jeremiah said. “I have no intention whatever of doing any such thing!”

    
But Irijah wouldn’t listen; he took Jeremiah before the city officials.
^15-16
 They were incensed with Jeremiah and had him flogged and put into the dungeon under the house of Jonathan the scribe, which had been converted into a prison. Jeremiah was kept there for several days,
¹⁷
 but eventually King Zedekiah sent for him to come to the palace secretly. The king asked him if there was any recent message from the Lord. “Yes,” said Jeremiah, “there is! You shall be defeated by the king of Babylon!”

    
¹⁸
 Then Jeremiah broached the subject of his imprisonment. “What have I ever done to deserve this?” he asked the king. “What crime have I committed? Tell me what I have done against you or your officials or the people?
¹⁹
 Where are those prophets now who told you that the king of Babylon would not come?
²⁰
 Listen, O my lord the king: I beg you, don’t send me back to that dungeon, for I’ll die there.”

    
²¹
 Then King Zedekiah commanded that Jeremiah not be returned to the dungeon but be placed in the palace prison instead, and that he be given a small loaf of fresh bread every day as long as there was any left in the city. So Jeremiah was kept in the palace prison.
*

Jeremiah
38

But when Shephatiah (son of Mattan) and Gedaliah (son of Pashhur) and Jucal (son of Shelemiah) and Pashhur (son of Malchiah) heard what Jeremiah had been telling the people—
²
 that everyone remaining in Jerusalem would die by sword, starvation, or disease, but anyone surrendering to the Babylonians would live,
³
 and that the city of Jerusalem would surely be captured by the king of Babylon—
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 they went to the king and said: “Sir, this fellow must die. That kind of talk will undermine the morale of the few soldiers we have left, and of all the people too. This man is a traitor.”

    
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 So King Zedekiah agreed. “All right,” he said. “Do as you like—I can’t stop you.”

    
⁶
 They took Jeremiah from his cell and lowered him by ropes into an empty cistern in the prison yard. (It belonged to Malchiah, a member of the royal family.) There was no water in it, but there was a thick layer of mire at the bottom, and Jeremiah sank down into it.

    
⁷
 When Ebed-melech the Ethiopian, an important palace official, heard that Jeremiah was in the cistern,
⁸
 he rushed out to the Gate of Benjamin where the king was holding court.

    
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 “My lord the king,” he said, “these men have done a very evil thing in putting Jeremiah into the cistern. He will die of hunger, for almost all the bread in the city is gone.”

    
¹⁰
 Then the king commanded Ebed-melech to take thirty men with him and pull Jeremiah out before he died.
¹¹
 So Ebed-melech took thirty men and went to a palace depot for discarded supplies where used clothing was kept. There he found some old rags and discarded garments which he took to the cistern and lowered to Jeremiah on a rope.
¹²
 Ebed-melech called down to Jeremiah, “Use these rags under your armpits to protect you from the ropes.” Then, when Jeremiah was ready,
¹³
 they pulled him out and returned him to the palace prison, where he remained.

    
¹⁴
 One day King Zedekiah sent for Jeremiah to meet him at the side entrance of the Temple.

    
“I want to ask you something,” the king said, “and don’t try to hide the truth.”

    
¹⁵
 Jeremiah said, “If I tell you the truth, you will kill me. And you won’t listen to me anyway.”

    
¹⁶
 So King Zedekiah swore before Almighty God his Creator that he would not kill Jeremiah or give him to the men who were after his life.

    
¹⁷
 Then Jeremiah said to Zedekiah, “The Almighty Lord, the God of Israel, says: If you will surrender to Babylon, you and your family shall live and the city will not be burned.
¹⁸
 If you refuse to surrender, this city shall be set afire by the Babylonian army and you will not escape.”

    
¹⁹
 “But I am afraid to surrender,” the king said, “for the Babylonians will hand me over to the Jews who have defected to them, and who knows what they will do to me?”

    
²⁰
 Jeremiah replied, “You won’t get into their hands if only you will obey the Lord; your life will be spared, and all will go well for you.
^21-22
 But if you refuse to surrender, the Lord has said that all the women left in your palace will be brought out and given to the officers of the Babylonian army; and these women will taunt you with bitterness. ‘Fine friends you have,’ they’ll say, ‘those Egyptians. They have betrayed you and left you to your fate!’
²³
 All your wives and children will be led out to the Babylonians, and you will not escape. You will be seized by the king of Babylon, and this city will be burned.”

    
²⁴
 Then Zedekiah said to Jeremiah, “On pain of death, don’t tell anyone you told me this!
²⁵
 And if my officials hear that I talked with you and they threaten you with death unless you tell them what we discussed,
²⁶
 just say that you begged me not to send you back to the dungeon in Jonathan’s house, for you would die there.”

    
²⁷
 And sure enough, it wasn’t long before all the city officials came to Jeremiah and asked him why the king had called for him. So he said what the king had told him to, and they left without finding out the truth, for the conversation had not been overheard by anyone.
²⁸
 And Jeremiah remained confined to the prison yard until the day Jerusalem was captured.

Jeremiah
39

It was in January of the ninth year of the reign of King Zedekiah of Judah that King Nebuchadnezzar and all his army came against Jerusalem again and besieged it.
²
 Two years later, in the month of July, they breached the wall, and the city fell,
³
 and all the officers of the Babylonian army came in and sat in triumph at the middle gate. Nergal-sharezer was there, Samgar-nebo, Sarsechim, Nergal-sharezer the king’s chief assistant, and many others.

    
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 When King Zedekiah and his soldiers realized that the city was lost, they fled during the night, going out through the gate between the two walls back of the palace garden and across the fields toward the Jordan Valley.
⁵
 But the Babylonians chased the king and caught him on the plains of Jericho and brought him to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, who was at Riblah in the land of Hamath, where he pronounced judgment upon him.
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 The king of Babylon made Zedekiah watch as they killed his children and all the nobles of Judah.
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 Then he gouged out Zedekiah’s eyes and bound him in chains to send him away to Babylon as a slave.

    
⁸
 Meanwhile the army burned Jerusalem, including the palace, and tore down the walls of the city.
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 Then Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, and his men sent the remnant of the population and all those who had defected to him to Babylon.
¹⁰
 But throughout the land of Judah he left a few people, the very poor, and gave them fields and vineyards.

    
^11-12
 Meanwhile King Nebuchadnezzar had told Nebuzaradan to find Jeremiah. “See that he isn’t hurt,” he said. “Look after him well and give him anything he wants.”
¹³
 So Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, and Nebushazban, the chief of the eunuchs, and Nergal-sharezer, the king’s advisor, and all the officials took steps to do as the king had commanded.
¹⁴
 They sent soldiers to bring Jeremiah out of the prison, and put him into the care of Gedaliah (son of Ahikam, son of Shaphan), to take him back to his home. And Jeremiah lived there among his people who were left in the land.

    
¹⁵
 The Lord gave the following message to Jeremiah before the Babylonians arrived, while he was still in prison:
¹⁶
 “Send this word to Ebed-melech the Ethiopian: The Lord, the God of Israel, says: I will do to this city everything I threatened; I will destroy it before your eyes,
¹⁷
 but I will deliver you. You shall not be killed by those you fear so much.
¹⁸
 As a reward for trusting me, I will preserve your life and keep you safe.”