Gedaliah at Mizpah
1 The word which came to Jeremiah from Yahweh, after Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard had let him go from Ramah, when he had taken him being bound in chains among all the captives of Jerusalem and Judah who were carried away captive to Babylon. 2 The captain of the guard took Jeremiah and said to him, “Yahweh your God pronounced this evil on this place; 3 and Yahweh has brought it, and done according as he spoke. Because you have sinned against Yahweh, and have not obeyed his voice, therefore this thing has come on you. 4 Now, behold, I release you today from the chains which are on your hand. If it seems good to you to come with me into Babylon, come, and I will take care of you; but if it seems bad to you to come with me into Babylon, don’t. Behold, all the land is before you. Where it seems good and right to you to go, go there.” 5 Now while he had not yet gone back, “Go back then,” he said, “to Gedaliah the son of Ahikam, the son of Shaphan, whom the king of Babylon has made governor over the cities of Judah, and dwell with him among the people; or go wherever it seems right to you to go.” So the captain of the guard gave him food and a present, and let him go. 6 Then Jeremiah went to Gedaliah the son of Ahikam to Mizpah, and lived with him among the people who were left in the land. 7 Now when all the captains of the forces who were in the fields, even they and their men, heard that the king of Babylon had made Gedaliah the son of Ahikam governor in the land, and had committed to him men, women, children, and of the poorest of the land, of those who were not carried away captive to Babylon, 8 then Ishmael the son of Nethaniah, and Johanan and Jonathan the sons of Kareah, and Seraiah the son of Tanhumeth, and the sons of Ephai the Netophathite, and Jezaniah the son of the Maacathite, they and their men came to Gedaliah to Mizpah. 9 Gedaliah the son of Ahikam the son of Shaphan swore to them and to their men, saying, “Don’t be afraid to serve the Chaldeans. Dwell in the land, and serve the king of Babylon, and it will be well with you. 10 As for me, behold, I will dwell at Mizpah, to stand before the Chaldeans who will come to us; but you, gather wine and summer fruits and oil, and put them in your vessels, and dwell in your cities that you have taken.” 11 Likewise when all the Jews who were in Moab, and among the children of Ammon, and in Edom, and who were in all the countries, heard that the king of Babylon had left a remnant of Judah, and that he had set over them Gedaliah the son of Ahikam, the son of Shaphan, 12 then all the Jews returned out of all places where they were driven, and came to the land of Judah, to Gedaliah, to Mizpah, and gathered very much wine and summer fruits. 13 Moreover Johanan the son of Kareah, and all the captains of the forces who were in the fields, came to Gedaliah to Mizpah, 14 and said to him, “Do you know that Baalis the king of the children of Ammon has sent Ishmael the son of Nethaniah to take your life?” But Gedaliah the son of Ahikam didn’t believe them. 15 Then Johanan the son of Kareah spoke to Gedaliah in Mizpah secretly, saying, “Please let me go, and I will kill Ishmael the son of Nethaniah, and no man will know it. Why should he take your life, that all the Jews who are gathered to you should be scattered, and the remnant of Judah perish?” 16 But Gedaliah the son of Ahikam said to Johanan the son of Kareah, “You shall not do this thing, for you speak falsely of Ishmael.”
A Babylonian officer preaches Jeremiah's own message back to him and sets him free, and a decent governor is warned of an assassination he refuses to believe in.
The release happens at Ramah, the assembly point where the chained captives were being sorted for the march. Jeremiah is standing among them in irons. The man who had said the exile would come is being deported with everyone else. What the captain of the guard then says is one of the strangest speeches in the book, because it is Jeremiah's own theology in a foreign officer's mouth: Yahweh your God pronounced this evil on this place; and Yahweh has brought it, and done according as he spoke. Because you have sinned against Yahweh... therefore this thing has come on you. Judah would not accept that from a prophet for forty years. The general who took the city states it as the obvious explanation of events.
The offer that follows is generous and completely open. Come to Babylon and be looked after, or do not, and all the land is before you. After a lifetime of being told where he could not go and what he could not say, Jeremiah is handed the whole country and food for the road. He chooses to stay. It is the only real freedom he exercises in the book, and he uses it to go to Mizpah and live among the people who were left.
What forms there for a few months is the nearest thing to a restoration the book records. The scattered guerrilla captains come in. Gedaliah swears to them that serving Babylon will go well. Refugees who had fled to Moab, Ammon and Edom hear that a remnant has been left, and they come home. And they gather wine and summer fruits very much. The harvest is abundant, in a country that had just been stripped. The promise that houses and fields would be bought again in this land is beginning quietly, with a fruit crop.
The warning arrives into that. Johanan tells the governor that an Ammonite king has sent Ishmael to kill him, and offers to deal with it quietly. Gedaliah refuses, and the text gives his reason in five words: you speak falsely of Ishmael. He is not naive about Babylon or about the risks of his position. He simply will not believe an accusation of murder against a man on the word of another. That decency is what destroys the settlement. The book records it without either praising or condemning him, and the question of what he should have done instead is left open.
settled What this mark means