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Context No. 689 of 4322 · Jeremiah

Context · Reflection

Jeremiah 38:11-15: in context

11So Ebedmelech took the men with him, and went into the house of the king under the treasury, and took from there rags and worn-out garments, and let them down by cords into the dungeon to Jeremiah. 12Ebedmelech the Ethiopian said to Jeremiah, “Now put these rags and worn-out garments under your armpits under the cords.” Jeremiah did so. 13So they lifted Jeremiah up with the cords, and took him up out of the dungeon; and Jeremiah remained in the court of the guard. 14Then Zedekiah the king sent and took Jeremiah the prophet to himself into the third entry that is in the LORD’s house. Then the king said to Jeremiah, “I will ask you something. Hide nothing from me.” 15Then Jeremiah said to Zedekiah, “If I declare it to you, will you not surely put me to death? If I give you counsel, you will not listen to me.”

Jerusalem is in the last months of the Babylonian siege, and Jeremiah has been prophesying the one thing the city's officials cannot bear to hear: that those who surrender will live and those who stay will die. For that they threw him into a cistern, a pit of mud, and left him to sink. One man went to the king for him, Ebed-melech, an Ethiopian eunuch of the palace, and got permission to pull him out. These verses are the rescue, and the detail in them is what stays with you.

Ebed-melech gathers old rags and worn-out clothes from a palace storeroom and lowers them on the ropes, and he calls down to Jeremiah to put the rags under his arms, under the cords, so they will not cut into him as they haul. In the middle of a dying city, a foreigner takes the trouble to keep the ropes from tearing a prophet's skin. Then the weak king, Zedekiah, sends for Jeremiah in secret, afraid of his own officials, and begs him to hide nothing. And Jeremiah, who knows him, answers with a question of his own: if I tell you the truth, will you not kill me, and if I give you counsel, will you even listen? The king wants the truth, privately, and has no intention of doing anything with it.

One man thought about the rope on the skin; a king wanted the truth but not the cost of obeying it. Which am I more often: the one who tends the small mercy, or the one who asks for truth I will not act on?

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