Zedekiah and Jeremiah

But a fear seized the king of Babylon, who had given the kingdom to Jehoiachin, and that at once. He was afraid that Jehoiachin would bear him a grudge for killing his father, and would make the country revolt from him because of it. So he sent an army and besieged Jehoiachin in Jerusalem. But Jehoiachin, who was of a gentle and just disposition, did not want to see the city endangered on his account. He took his mother and his relatives and handed them over to the commanders sent by the king of Babylon, accepting their oaths that neither they nor the city would suffer any harm. That agreement they did not keep for a single year, for the king of Babylon did not keep it. He gave orders to his generals to take captive all who were in the city, both the young men and the craftsmen, and bring them to him in chains; their number was ten thousand eight hundred and thirty-two, besides Jehoiachin with his mother and friends. When these had been brought to him, he kept them in custody. He appointed Jehoiachin’s uncle Zedekiah king, and made him swear an oath that he would certainly hold the country for him, attempt no revolt, and make no league of friendship with the Egyptians. [a]

Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he took the government. He had the same mother as his brother Jehoiakim, but he despised justice and his duty; for in truth the men of his own age around him were wicked, and the whole people did whatever unjust and insolent things they pleased. For this reason the prophet Jeremiah came to him often and protested to him. He insisted that he must give up his impieties and sins and take care to do what was right, and neither listen to the rulers, among whom were wicked men, nor believe the false prophets, who were deceiving him as if the king of Babylon would make no more war on the city and as if the Egyptians would march against the king of Babylon and conquer him; for what they said was not true, and events would not turn out as they expected. As for Zedekiah himself, while he was listening to the prophet he believed him, agreed to everything as true, and supposed it was for his own good. But then his friends corrupted him, talked him out of what the prophet advised, and made him do what they pleased. Ezekiel also foretold in Babylon the calamities that were coming on the people, and he wrote them down and sent them to Jerusalem. But Zedekiah did not believe their prophecies, for the following reason. The two prophets agreed with one another in what they said in every other respect: that the city would be taken, and that Zedekiah himself would be taken captive. But Ezekiel differed from Jeremiah and said that Zedekiah would not see Babylon, while Jeremiah told him that the king of Babylon would carry him there in chains. And because they did not both say the same thing on this point, he disbelieved what they both appeared to agree on, and condemned them as not speaking the truth in it, although everything foretold to him came to pass according to their prophecies, as we will show at a more fitting opportunity. [c]

When Zedekiah had kept the league of mutual help he had made with the Babylonians for eight years, he broke it and went over to the Egyptians, hoping with their help to overcome the Babylonians. When the king of Babylon learned this, he made war on him. He laid his country waste, took his fortified towns, and came to the city of Jerusalem itself to besiege it. But when the king of Egypt heard what straits his ally Zedekiah was in, he took a great army and came into Judea, as if to raise the siege. At this the king of Babylon left Jerusalem, met the Egyptians, joined battle with them and beat them; and when he had put them to flight, he pursued them and drove them out of all Syria. As soon as the king of Babylon had left Jerusalem, the false prophets deceived Zedekiah. They said that the king of Babylon would not make war on him any more, and that their countrymen whom he had removed from their own country to Babylon would return with all the vessels of the temple of which the king had robbed it. But Jeremiah came among them and prophesied the opposite of those predictions, and what proved to be true. He said that they were doing wrong and deceiving the king; that the Egyptians would be of no use to them; that the king of Babylon, having defeated them, would renew the war against Jerusalem and besiege it again, would destroy the people by famine, carry away those who remained into captivity, take away what they had as plunder, and carry off the riches in the temple; and that, beyond this, he would burn it and utterly overthrow the city. “And we will serve him and his descendants seventy years. Then the Persians and the Medes will put an end to our slavery under them by overthrowing the Babylonians, and when they have set us free to return to this land, we will rebuild the temple and restore Jerusalem.” When Jeremiah said this, most of the people believed him; but the rulers and the wicked despised him as a man out of his mind. Now he had decided to go away to his own home town, which was called Anathoth and was about two and a half miles from Jerusalem. As he was going, one of the rulers met him and seized him, and falsely accused him of going over as a deserter to the Babylonians. Jeremiah said that the charge was false and that he was only going to his own town. But the other would not believe him. He seized him and led him away to the rulers and laid an accusation against him; and under them he endured every kind of torment and torture and was held for punishment. This was the condition he was in for some time, suffering unjustly what I have already described. [e]

In the ninth year of the reign of Zedekiah, on the tenth day of the tenth month, the king of Babylon made a second expedition against Jerusalem. He lay before it eighteen months and pressed the siege with the utmost effort. Two of the greatest calamities also came on them at the same time that Jerusalem was besieged, famine and plague, and caused great havoc among them. Though the prophet Jeremiah was in prison, he did not rest. He cried out and proclaimed aloud, and urged the people to open their gates and admit the king of Babylon; for if they did, they would be saved, with their whole families, but if they did not, they would be destroyed. He foretold that anyone who stayed in the city would certainly perish in one of two ways, either wasted by famine or killed by the enemy’s sword; but if he fled to the enemy, he would escape death. Yet even in the midst of their terrible calamities, the rulers who heard him did not believe him. They came to the king in anger and told him what Jeremiah had said, and accused the prophet and demanded that he be put to death as a madman who was breaking their spirit and, by announcing miseries, weakening the eagerness of the people, who were otherwise ready to face danger for the king and for their country; while he was urging them to flee to the enemy and telling them that the city would be taken and everyone would perish. [i]

The king himself was not at all angered against Jeremiah, such was his gentle and righteous disposition. Yet so as not to be drawn into a quarrel with those rulers at such a time by opposing what they intended, he let them do whatever they wanted with the prophet. When the king had given them this permission, they went straight into the prison, took him, and let him down with a rope into a pit full of mud, so that he would be suffocated and die of himself. So he stood up to his neck in the mud that was all around him, and stayed there. But one of the king’s servants, who was held in esteem by him, an Ethiopian by descent, told the king what a state the prophet was in. He said that the king’s friends and rulers had done wrong in putting the prophet into the mud, and in that way contriving that he should suffer a death more bitter than one in chains alone. When the king heard this, he regretted having handed the prophet over to the rulers. He told the Ethiopian to take thirty men of the king’s guards, with ropes and whatever else they found necessary for the prophet’s rescue, and to draw him up at once. So the Ethiopian took the men he was ordered to take, drew the prophet up out of the mud, and let him go without a guard. [l]

Then the king sent for him privately and asked what he could tell him from God that might suit his present circumstances, and urged him to tell it to him. Jeremiah replied that he had something to say; but he said also that he would not be believed, and that if he gave warning, he would not be listened to. “For your friends have determined to destroy me, as though I had been guilty of some great wickedness. And where now are those men who deceived you and said that the king of Babylon would not come and fight against us any more? But I am afraid now to speak the truth, in case you condemn me to die.” When the king had assured him on oath that he would neither put him to death himself nor hand him over to the rulers, he grew bold on the strength of that assurance and gave him this advice: that he should surrender the city to the Babylonians. He said that it was God who prophesied this through him: that he must do so if he would be saved and escape the danger he was in, and then the city would not fall to the ground nor the temple be burned; but if he disobeyed, he would be the cause of these miseries coming on the citizens and of the calamity that would fall on his whole house. When the king heard this, he said that he would willingly do what Jeremiah urged and what he declared would be to his advantage, but that he was afraid of those of his own countrymen who had deserted to the Babylonians, in case he were accused by them to the king of Babylon and punished. But the prophet encouraged him and said that he had no reason to fear such punishment, for he would not experience any misfortune if he surrendered everything to the Babylonians, neither he nor his children nor his wives, and the temple would then remain unharmed. When Jeremiah had said this, the king let him go. He charged him to betray what they had decided to none of the citizens, and to tell none of these matters to any of the rulers if they learned that he had been sent for and asked him why he had been sent for and what the king had said to him; but to pretend to them that he had begged the king not to keep him in chains and in prison. And indeed he told them so; for they came to the prophet and asked him what advice it was that he had come to give the king concerning them. And so I have finished what concerns this matter. [m]