Jeremiah 37
Jeremiah arrested leaving Jerusalem
Jeremiah tries to claim his land purchase
1When King Jehoiakim died, his son became king: Jehoiachin, also known as Coniah. But Babylon’s King Nebuchadnezzar fired him and appointed the late King Josiah’s son Zedekiah [1] as the new king of Judah. 2During his time as king, everyone ignored the prophet Jeremiah. The king and his officials and the citizens of Judah didn't take Jeremiah seriously.3King Zedekiah sent two messengers to Jeremiah: Jehucal son of Shelemiah and a priest named Zephaniah, son of Maaseiah. The king asked Jeremiah, “Would you please talk to the LORD our God. Pray for us.”
4Jeremiah had not been arrested at this time. He was still freely moving among the people. 5Pharaoh’s Egyptian army was marching north to help the nation of Judah. But the Babylonians pulled away from their siege of Jerusalem and moved to intercept the Egyptians.
6This is when the LORD sent another message to Jeremiah. 7The LORD and God of Israel told Jeremiah to give the king this message:
“Pharaoh's army, which is marching up to help you, is going to turn around and go back to Egypt. 8Babylonians are going to come back and resume their attack of Jerusalem. They’ll take the town and they’ll burn it. 9Don't kid yourselves into thinking that the Babylonians are gone for good. They are coming back. 10You don't have a chance. Even if you defeated the army and all that remained were a few wounded men laying in their tents trying to recover, they would get up and come back into the city and burn it to the ground.”
He’s in the jailhouse now
11Babylon’s army withdrew from Jerusalem to engage Pharaoh’s Egyptian army.12Jeremiah left Jerusalem to go north into the tribal territory of Benjamin. He was going to claim some property [2] that belonged to him. 13As Jeremiah was leaving Jerusalem through the Benjamin Gate, a guard arrested him. The guard was Irijah, son of Shelemiah and grandson of Hananiah. He told Jeremiah, “Deserter! You’re trying to desert to the Babylonians.”
14Jeremiah said, “That's a bold-faced lie. I am not deserting to the Babylonians.” Irijah didn’t believe it. He escorted Jeremiah to the local officials. 15Livid, the officials beat Jeremiah and ordered him imprisoned. They put him in the former home of a kingdom official named Jonathan. The building had been converted into a jailhouse. 16There, they dropped him into a hole [3] in the ground and left him there for several days.
Jeremiah’s prison upgrade
17King Zachariah called for Jeremiah and met with him privately in his palace. He asked Jeremiah, “Have you had any message from the LORD?” Jeremiah said “Yes. You are going to get arrested and handed over to the king of Babylon.”18Jeremiah asked King Zedekiah, “Tell me, what have I done wrong? What did I do to you or your officials or the citizens of Judah to warrant getting thrown in prison? 19And by the way, where are your other prophets now? I’m talking about those people who said the King of Babylon is not coming? 20Listen carefully, my master and king. Please don’t send me back to that jailhouse in the former home of Jonathan. I would die there.”
21King Zachariah approved the request. He ordered Jeremiah held, instead, in the courtyard where palace guards stayed. He also ordered for Jeremiah a loaf of bread, fresh every day from the Baker’s Street bakeries—for as long as there was any bread inside the city.
Footnotes
Zedekiah was the third son of King Josiah to serve as king over Judah. The earlier two were Jehoahaz and Jehoiakim. But Zedekiah was a puppet king answering to Babylon. And because of it he may have been unpopular and unwanted among the people. The setting was tense. Babylonians had invaded early in 588 BC. They lay siege to Jerusalem, but retreated to defeat the Egyptian army, coming to Judah’s rescue. The scene appears to take place during that pause in the siege.
This property sounds like the land his cousin, Hanamel, sold him earlier (Jeremiah 32:9). But the problem is the story of that sale takes place after Jeremiah is arrested, not before. Scholars are left guessing about how to explain this apparent contradiction. One guess, this attempted visit was before the sale reported in chapter 32.
It’s impossible to describe the conditions of Jeremiah’s imprisonment. The descriptions seem to clash. He’s in a house that was remodeled into a jailhouse. But here, the writer uses “vault,” and “cistern/hole in the ground” to describe his location. In Jeremiah 38, he’s thrown into a cistern, a waterproof hole in the ground built to store water as a kind of handmade well. Perhaps there was a cistern beside the jailhouse.
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