The Murder of Gedaliah and the Flight into Egypt

But in Judea, over which, as we related above, Gedaliah had been set after the destruction of Jerusalem, the Jews took it very badly that a ruler not of the royal line had been given them by the mere will of the conqueror. With a certain Ishmael as their leader and the instigator of the wicked plot, they murdered Gedaliah by treachery while he was at a banquet. Those who had no part in the plot wanted to avenge the deed, and they quickly took up arms against Ishmael. When he learned that destruction threatened him, he left the force he had gathered and fled to the Ammonites with no more than eight companions. [a]

Fear then fell on the whole people that the king of Babylon would punish the guilt of a few by destroying them all, for besides Gedaliah they had killed many Chaldeans with him. So they made a plan to flee into Egypt, but first they went in a body to Jeremiah and asked him for counsel from God. He urged them all, in the words of God, to stay in their own country. He told them that if they did, the power of God would protect them and no danger would come to them from the Babylonians; but if they went into Egypt, they would all perish there by the sword, by famine, and by different kinds of death. But the rabble, with the perversity they usually show, and unused to giving way to good advice and to the power of God, went into Egypt all the same. The sacred Scriptures are silent about what became of them, and I have not been able to discover anything about it.