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Context No. 1623 of 4322 · Jeremiah

Context · Reflection

Jeremiah 37:16-21: in context

16When Jeremiah had come into the dungeon house and into the cells, and Jeremiah had remained there many days, 17then Zedekiah the king sent and had him brought out. The king asked him secretly in his house, “Is there any word from the LORD?” Jeremiah said, “There is.” He also said, “You will be delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon.” 18Moreover Jeremiah said to King Zedekiah, “How have I sinned against you, against your servants, or against this people, that you have put me in prison? 19Now where are your prophets who prophesied to you, saying, ‘The king of Babylon will not come against you, nor against this land’? 20Now please hear, my lord the king: please let my supplication be presented before you, that you not cause me to return to the house of Jonathan the scribe, lest I die there.” 21Then Zedekiah the king commanded, and they committed Jeremiah into the court of the guard. They gave him daily a loaf of bread out of the bakers’ street, until all the bread in the city was gone. Thus Jeremiah remained in the court of the guard.

Jeremiah has been thrown into a dungeon and kept there many days. King Zedekiah secretly sends for him and asks, is there any word from the LORD? Jeremiah gives no softened answer to please the king who holds his fate: there is, he says, and you will be handed over to the king of Babylon. He protests his unjust imprisonment and pleads not to be sent back to the dungeon, where he might die. Zedekiah grants that much, committing him to the court of the guard with a daily loaf of bread.

The moment worth noticing is Jeremiah's answer to the king's question. Zedekiah, secretly, hoping perhaps for a favorable word, asks if there is any message from the LORD. And Jeremiah, a prisoner at the king's mercy, whose freedom the king could grant with a word, gives him the same hard truth he had always given: you will be delivered to Babylon. He does not blunt it, does not tell the king what he wants to hear, does not trade the truth for his own release, though a more comforting word might have won his freedom. He was suffering, imprisoned unjustly, with every incentive to say something that would please the king and improve his lot; and he told the truth instead, the whole hard truth, unbent. There is a costly integrity in that. It is one thing to speak the truth when it costs nothing; it is another to speak it from a dungeon, to the one person who could free you, when a softened word might buy your release. Jeremiah's faithfulness to God's word was not for sale, not even for his own freedom. There is a searching example in it for the times we are tempted to bend the truth for our own advantage, to tell those who hold power over us what they want to hear because it might go better for us. Jeremiah, with everything to gain from flattery and everything to lose from honesty, gave the king the truth. Faithfulness to the truth that holds even from a dungeon, even toward the one who could free us, even when a softer word would serve us better, is a rare and costly thing, and Jeremiah shows it.

When telling the truth would cost me and a softened word would serve my advantage, am I tempted to bend it to please those who hold power over me, or can I show Jeremiah's costly integrity, telling the truth unbent even when honesty costs and flattery would gain?

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