The Cistern and the Thirty Rags
1 Shephatiah the son of Mattan, Gedaliah the son of Pashhur, Jucal the son of Shelemiah, and Pashhur the son of Malchijah heard the words that Jeremiah spoke to all the people, saying, 2 “Yahweh says, ‘He who remains in this city will die by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence, but he who goes out to the Chaldeans will live. He will escape with his life and he will live.’ 3 Yahweh says, ‘This city will surely be given into the hand of the army of the king of Babylon, and he will take it.’” 4 Then the princes said to the king, “Please let this man be put to death, because he weakens the hands of the men of war who remain in this city, and the hands of all the people, in speaking such words to them; for this man doesn’t seek the welfare of this people, but harm.” 5 Zedekiah the king said, “Behold, he is in your hand; for the king can’t do anything to oppose you.” 6 Then they took Jeremiah and threw him into the dungeon of Malchijah the king’s son, that was in the court of the guard. They let down Jeremiah with cords. In the dungeon there was no water, but mire; and Jeremiah sank in the mire. 7 Now when Ebedmelech the Ethiopian, a eunuch, who was in the king’s house, heard that they had put Jeremiah in the dungeon (the king was then sitting in Benjamin’s gate), 8 Ebedmelech went out of the king’s house, and spoke to the king, saying, 9 “My lord the king, these men have done evil in all that they have done to Jeremiah the prophet, whom they have cast into the dungeon. He is likely to die in the place where he is, because of the famine; for there is no more bread in the city.” 10 Then the king commanded Ebedmelech the Ethiopian, saying, “Take from here thirty men with you, and take up Jeremiah the prophet out of the dungeon, before he dies.” 11 So Ebedmelech took the men with him, and went into the house of the king under the treasury, and took from there rags and worn-out garments, and let them down by cords into the dungeon to Jeremiah. 12 Ebedmelech the Ethiopian said to Jeremiah, “Now put these rags and worn-out garments under your armpits under the cords.” Jeremiah did so. 13 So they lifted Jeremiah up with the cords, and took him up out of the dungeon; and Jeremiah remained in the court of the guard.
The officials drop Jeremiah into the mud of an empty cistern to die quietly, and the man who gets him out is a foreign slave in the palace.
The charge brought against him is the most modern-sounding in the book. He weakens the hands of the men of war and of all the people by speaking such words; this man doesn't seek the welfare of this people, but harm. It is not a claim that he is lying. It is a claim that the truth, said out loud during a siege, is itself an act of harm. On that reasoning any accurate report of a hopeless position becomes treason. What he had actually said is quoted just above, and it includes a way to live.
The king's answer to the request for a death sentence is the abdication of a monarchy in nine words: Behold, he is in your hand; for the king can't do anything to oppose you. Zedekiah does not agree with them and does not stop them. He states his own powerlessness and steps aside, and that sentence explains everything else he does in the next chapters.
The method chosen is worth attention, because it is designed to avoid an execution. They lower him by ropes into a cistern belonging to a royal prince, and the text notes what was in it. No water, but mire, and he sank in the mud. Nobody strikes him. He is put somewhere and left, in a city where the bread has run out, so that starvation rather than any named person will finish it. The princes who tore their clothes over a scroll are not these men, but the office is the same.
What breaks the arrangement is a man with no standing at all: Ebedmelech, an Ethiopian and a court eunuch, a foreigner and a servant in the household of the king he is about to correct. He goes out to the gate where Zedekiah is sitting in public. He says plainly that these men have done evil, and that the prophet will die of hunger where he is. The king, who could not oppose the princes, gives him thirty men on the spot. And then the detail that no invented story would carry. Ebedmelech goes to a storeroom under the treasury for old rags and worn-out clothes, lowers them first, and tells Jeremiah to put them under his armpits beneath the ropes. A man being hauled out of mud by cords would have been cut to the bone. Somebody thought about that before pulling.
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