Jeremiah 41

The original Hebrew text says it was “the seventh month” on the Hebrew lunar calendar. It’s called Tishri and also Ethanim. It runs from about mid-September to mid-October. The writer doesn’t say what year. But the presumption here is that he’s continuing the story from the fall of Jerusalem in July of 586 BC. Some scholars say Jerusalem fell in 587 BC.

The royal family here refers to King David’s family dynasty, which began some 600 years earlier. Since David’s time, the only legitimate kings of the Israelites came from David’s family.

Mizpah was the new capital of Babylon’s Judah—the new Jerusalem—since Babylon destroyed Jerusalem. Several sites have been suggested as contenders. Perhaps the top contender is Tell en-Nasbeh, about 8 miles (12 km) north of Jerusalem. Another is Nabi Samwil, 5 miles (8 km) northwest of Jerusalem.

This is the same Ishmael that Johanan, one of Judah’s militia leaders, had warned was going to try to assassinate him (Jeremiah 40:13-16). Johanan said that Baalis, king of Ammon, had ordered the hit.

Shechem, Shiloh, and Samaria weren’t part of Judah. They were part of the northern Jewish kingdom of Israel, which Assyrians from what is now northern Iraq erased from the world map in 722 BC by killing or deporting the citizens. These men in mourning, likely for the Temple, suggest King Josiah’s religious reform movement a generation earlier in 622 BC had worked. He went into what once was Israel’s kingdom and tore down pagan worship centers and promoted worship at Jerusalem’s Temple.

Shaving beards and wearing torn clothes were common ways of expressing grief—like wearing dark clothes today. So was cutting the skin. But Jewish law said that’s a custom to avoid: “Don’t do anything to commemorate the dead if it involves cutting your body or permanently painting yourself with tattoos” (Leviticus 19:28).

These were fake tears from what sounds like a man who made a game of treachery and murder.

A cistern was a storage pit to collect rainwater or water hauled from a spring or a stream. It was often chiseled out of stone and lined with waterproof plaster. And in this dry land, it was often empty after a hot summer and before the winter rains.

King Asa ruled Judah from about 911-870 BC, some 300 years before Jeremiah. So, the cisterns were that old.

It comes as a surprise that the Babylonians didn’t kill King Zedekiah’s daughter, as they did his sons. They may have hidden, like some of the local militias did.

That included Jeremiah (Jeremiah 40:5-6).

Gibeon has been identified with a dirt mount of ruins called Tel el-Jib, about a two-hour walk north of Jerusalem, six miles (10 km).

Location unknown. They didn’t go home to Mizpah but instead headed south. That was the only direction they could go by land to get away from Babylon. They expected Babylon to retaliate for the murder of their appointed governor.