Jeremiah 38-41

[wolfpurplemoon]

Jeremiah is imprisoned for his demoralising prophecies, as he says that anyone who stays in Jerusalem to fight the Babylonians will die and anyone who surrenders will live. This is understandably upsetting to the soldiers who are doing their best to defend their city.

The Babylonians don't do capturing a city half heartedly, after about 18 months of siege they finally break through and capture the king and all the officials who are all put to death before they burnt down the palace, temple and people's homes and took everyone who was left captive.

The King of Babylon frees Jeremiah and he is given food and a present. I guess he likes a man who prophesied that he'd be victorious in a big siege and who says he's on a mission from God, probably makes him feel special.

Ishmael tries to get revenge for the death of the royal family by murdering the man put in place to rule the land and also a bunch of other people who happened to be there at the time and some other people who came to mourn at the temple (except for a few who promise him food in exchange for their lives). He then takes everyone else captive and marches them off. The captives are then rescued but Ishmael gets away.

Comments

[zteccc.livejournal.com]

Jeremiah is imprisoned in a well while speaking a very unwelcome truth. The soldiers, and certainly the King didn't really like being told that they had no hope and that God wasn't going to save them. Facing the consequences of our actions is frequently unpleasant. An Ethiopian official recognized that Jeremiah was a prophet of God and petitioned king Zedekiah to have him pulled from the well. Zedekiah, probably not wanting to lose face in front of the Ethiopian relented. It is likely that Zedekiah wanted Ethiopia to help save Jerusalem, so Zedekiah may have been pressed to keep the Ethiopian happy (even though the Ethiopians were unlikely to have been able to stop the Babylonian army that had already surrounded the city).

Zedekiah knows that Jeremiah is a true prophet and goes to him to ask what can be done. Jeremiah tells Zedekiah that God is giving him one more chance to obey, to preserve his life and the city. Zedekiah doesn't trust God and refuses.

Jeremiah witnesses the capture of Jerusalem. Zedekiah's family is slain as Jeremiah had prophesied. Zedekiah was captured, blinded and taken to Babylon as he continually refused to do what God had told him to do through Jeremiah. Jerusalem is burned, the walls broken down; the city is left uninhabitable (a city without walls had no defenses and wouldn't have been survivable if any raiders/looters came around). Jeremiah is protected by Nebuchadnezzar and allowed to remain in Judah unlike the vast majority of the people of Judah who were taken into exile in Babylon.

Note that Jeremiah mentions Nebo-Sarsekim, a name lost to history outside of the Bible until 2007 when a clay tablet from the appropriate time period, bearing that name, referring to Nebuchadnezzar as king of Babylon, and coming from a city in Iraq near modern Baghdad was found. The archaeological evidence of the tablet supports the authenticity of the book of Jeremiah as being written at the time that Nebuchadnezzar was king in Babylon and that Jeremiah would have been a contemporary of Nebo-Sarsekim and the others.

The Ethiopian official who spoke up for Jeremiah is protected because he recognized that Jeremiah was a prophet of God and supported him even though it was unpopular in Zedekiah's court and could have possibly led to trouble.

The ruler that Babylon put in charge of Judah is murdered by some former officers of Zedekiah who were not captured. Some of the murderers flee to Ammon, others assemble with the remainder of Zedekiah's soldiers and march toward Egypt thinking that they will be safe there.