Jeremiah 38

the city and the temple from ruin, but he refused to listen. Jeremiah warned him that the royal family and the court officials would not escape judgment and that he would be taken captive to Babylon, where he would die in peace. One act of faith and courage would have saved the city from ruin and the people from slaughter, but Zedekiah was afraid of his counselors (38:1–6) and was only a pawn in their hands.

The treachery of the people (34:8–22). At one point during the siege, Zedekiah and the people made a covenant with the Lord in the temple (v. 15) to free all the Jewish slaves. A calf was slain and then cut in half, and the priests, officers, and people walked between the halves as a sign that they would obey the terms of the covenant (vv. 18–19; Gen. 15:17). In so doing, they were agreeing to free their Jewish slaves or be willing to suffer what the calf had suffered.

According to the law of Moses, a Jewish master had to free his Jewish slaves at the end of seven years of service (Ex. 21:1–11; Deut. 15:12–18). The Jews hadn’t done this for years, and now they decided it was a good thing to do. Why? Perhaps they felt that God would honor their obedience and defeat the enemy in some miraculous way, as He had done for Hezekiah (Isa. 36—37). Instead of believing God’s Word and submitting to Babylon, the Jews tried to bargain with the Lord and “bribe” Him into helping their cause.

Of course, there were probably some practical considerations behind this covenant. If the slaves were free, they’d have to care for themselves; their masters wouldn’t have to feed them or care for them. Also freemen were more likely to want to fight the enemy and maintain their newfound freedom. Whatever the reason, the effects of the covenant didn’t last very long, for when there was a lull in the siege and Nebuchadnezzar went off to confront the Egyptian army (Jer. 34:21–22; 37:5–11), the masters all forced their slaves back into servitude. The solemn covenant made in the temple meant nothing.

Before we condemn these dishonest masters too much, let’s admit that God’s people often make promises to the Lord when they’re in tough times, only to repudiate them when things get better. In my pastoral ministry, I’ve heard more than one suffering saint on a hospital bed promise to be the best Christian in the church if only God would give healing, and when He granted the request, he or she immediately forgot Him.

Jeremiah took advantage of this event to preach a sermon about Judah’s treachery against the Lord (34:12–22). God had set the Israelites free from Egyptian bondage and had made a covenant with them to be their God, but they broke the covenant and returned to idolatry. Now they broke the law by enslaving their own people unjustly. By what they did in the temple and the way they treated their fellow Jews, they profaned the name of the Lord. They hadn’t really proclaimed freedom to their slaves, but God would proclaim “freedom” to the nation— freedom “to fall by the sword, plague, and famine” (v. 17 niv). The prophet predicted a terrible death for all the treacherous people who had participated in the covenant, and his predictions came true (vv. 19–20).

The integrity of the Rechabites (35:1–19). This event occurred eighteen years earlier, during the reign of Jehoiakim (609–597 BC). Jeremiah probably put the account at this point in the book for the sake of contrast: The people of Judah dishonored the Lord by disobeying His law, while the Rechabites honored their father by obeying his command.

The Rechabites were a clan of nomadic people loyal to their ancestor Jonadab (2 Kings 10:15–23), who commanded them not to live in houses, not to have farms or vineyards, and not to drink wine. They were related to Moses’ father-in-law (Judg. 1:16; 4:11) and for over 250 years had composed a small “separatist” clan in the nation. Because of the Babylonian invasion, they had forsaken their tents and moved into Jerusalem.

God didn’t ask Jeremiah to serve the Rechabites wine in order to tempt them, because God doesn’t tempt us (James 1:13–15). This was another action sermon to give Jeremiah an opportunity to tell the leaders of Judah how unfaithful they had been to God’s covenant. It wasn’t wrong for the Jewish people to drink wine so long as they didn’t get drunk, but it was wrong for the Rechabites to drink wine because they had made a commitment not to drink it. God didn’t commend these men for their personal standards but for their faithfulness to their father’s command.

The message to the nation was clear. If the command of a mere man, Jonadab, was respected and obeyed by his family for over two centuries, why didn’t the people of Israel and Judah obey the command of Almighty God—a command that the prophets had repeated over and over again? If a family tradition was preserved with such dedication, why was the very law of God treated with such disrespect? Obeying Jonadab’s words had only a limited and temporal significance, but disobeying God’s Word had eternal consequences!

How often God’s people are put to shame by the devotion and discipline of people who don’t even know the Lord but who are intensely loyal to their family, their religion, or their personal pursuits. Even people who want nothing to do with the Word of God can be loyal to traditions and man-made codes. If Christians were putting into their spiritual walk the kind of discipline that athletes put into their chosen sport, the church would be pulsating with revival life.

“There’s no problem so big or complicated that it can’t be run away from.” So read a piece of graffito found on a London wall in 1979, probably adapted from the “Peanuts” comic strip drawn by Charles Schulz. Whatever the source, the statement certainly represents King Zedekiah’s approach to the terrible problems in Judah when the enemy was at the gates.

Next to Pontius Pilate (John 18—19), no ruler in Scripture reveals such indecision and vacillation as does King Zedekiah. These two chapters record four occasions when Zedekiah made contact with Jeremiah but rejected the word that the prophet gave him. Listen to his feeble words.

“Pray for us!” (37:1–10). Afraid to come personally lest he lose the support of his officials, the king sent Jehucal (Jucal) and Zephaniah to solicit the prayers of Jeremiah for the king and the nation. Jehucal was not Jeremiah’s friend, and he eventually urged the king to have the prophet killed (Jer. 38:1, 4). God had told Jeremiah not to pray for the people, but when the Babylonian army departed to deal with the Egyptians, it seemed like prayer wasn’t needed (37:5–10). No doubt the false prophets announced that this event was a miracle, like the slaying of the Assyrian army in Hezekiah’s day (Isa. 36—37). Once again, they were living on false hopes even though Jeremiah told them that Nebuchadnezzar would return and finish the work God had given him to do.

“Is there any word from the Lord?” (37:11–21). Until now, Jeremiah was a free man (v. 4), but his enemies found reason to imprison him. During the lull in the siege, Jeremiah tried to go home to Anathoth to take care of some family business, but the guard at the gate arrested him for defecting to the enemy. Of course, Jeremiah had preached surrender to Babylon (21:9) and would preach it again (38:2, 19; 39:9), but he certainly wasn’t a traitor. He loved his nation and gave his life to try to save it, but his first loyalty was to the Lord.

Jeremiah was beaten and put into prison. When Zedekiah heard about it, he recognized it as an opportunity to talk safely to Jeremiah, for the officers would think the king was looking into Jeremiah’s case. After bringing him to the palace, the king asked, “Is there any word from the Lord?” The prophet gave him an immediate answer, “Yes … you will be handed over to the king of Babylon” (37: niv). Why say more? Jeremiah had already declared God’s message many times, only to see the message rejected.

Jeremiah took the opportunity to expose the deceptive, optimistic messages of the false prophets. If they had been speaking the truth, the king should have asked them for a message from the Lord! Meanwhile, Jeremiah asked to be delivered from prison, a request that Zedekiah granted. The prophet was placed in the court of the prison and granted a daily ration of bread as long as the supply lasted. While we appreciate Zedekiah’s concern to save Jeremiah, we wonder why the king didn’t have a concern to save his people. He was afraid to change his policies because he was afraid of his advisers and officers.

“He is in your hands” (38:1–13). Angry because Jeremiah’s words were hurting the war effort, four of Zedekiah’s officials banded together to urge the king to kill the prophet. We know nothing about Shephatiah. If Gedaliah was the son of the Pashur who had put Jeremiah in the stocks (20:1–6), he was certainly no friend to Jeremiah or to the truth. Jucal we met before (37:3); he may have been related to the guard who arrested Jeremiah (v. 13). This Pashur must not be confused with the Pashur mentioned in Jeremiah 20. They accused Jeremiah of not seeking the welfare of the people, and yet the welfare of the people was the thing to which he had dedicated his life!

Too weak to oppose his own princes, the king gave in to their request. Instead of simply having Jeremiah slain, which would have been shedding innocent blood, the men had him imprisoned in an old cistern, where he sank in the mire at the bottom. The officers hoped that the prophet would eventually be forgotten there and would die. God, however, raised up a deliverer in the person of Ebed-Melech—a man from Ethiopia, who became an Old Testament “Good Samaritan.”

The vacillating, spineless king usually agreed with the last person who spoke to him, and Ebed-Melech took advantage of that fault. Thus, the king gave Ebed-Melech permission to rescue Jeremiah. It wouldn’t have taken thirty men to lift the prophet out of the cistern, but the king probably wanted to protect both his officer and the prophet from any attacks by Jeremiah’s enemies. (Some commentators suggest that the text should read “three men.” Thirty men would certainly call attention to themselves and what they were doing.)

Later, Jeremiah sent a special message of encourage-