Jeremiah 37:1-10

Jeremiah 37, 38. Fortunes of Jeremiah during the Siege (588- 586).

Jeremiah 37:1. Zedekiah, made vassal-king in place of his nephew, Jehoiachin (in 597) sends Jehucal (Jeremiah 38:1) and Zephaniah (Jeremiah 21:1, where a similar inquiry earlier in the siege is recorded) to ask for Jeremiah's intercession with Yahweh (cf. Isaiah 37:4), at a time when the siege has been raised through the Egyptian expedition of Pharaoh (Hophra, 589- 564; cf. Jeremiah 44:30). Jeremiah sends back to say that the Babylonians will return, and that the capture of the city is certain, even though the Babylonian army had but a few wounded survivors. (The Egyptians were presumably defeated by the Babylonians on this occasion, cf. Ezekiel 30:21).