Jeremiah 37:11-15

II. THE PROPHET CONFINED Jeremiah 37:11 to Jeremiah 38:28

Jeremiah experienced a great deal of suffering at the hands of the national leaders during those last dark days before the fall of Jerusalem. He was arrested about the middle of the Chaldean siege. He spent the last nine months or so before the fall of the city being bounced around from one detention area to another[325] as the king and his advisers tried to determine what to do with this troublesome prophet. On more than one occasion the prophet was given opportunity to change his message, to deliver some favorable oracle, and thereby improve his miserable lot. If ever a man had reason to compromise his message Jeremiah had it. The fact that through all his personal suffering he refused to alter his basic message authenticates him as a genuine prophet of God.

[325] Five phases of Jeremiah's prison experiences are recorded: (1) He was arrested in the gate and committed to a dungeon on the false charge of treason (Jeremiah 37:11-15); (2) he was released from the dungeon, but restrained in the court of the prison; (3) he was imprisoned in the miry dungeon of Malchiah (Jeremiah 38:1-6); (4) he was again released from the dungeon and kept in the prison court (Jeremiah 38:13-28) until the capture of the city; (5) he was carried in chains from the city by Nebuzaradan, an officer of the Chaldean army, and was finally released at Ramah (Jeremiah 40:1-4).

A. Arrested by the Guard Jeremiah 37:11-15

TRANSLATION

(11) And it came to pass when the army of the Chaldeans had lifted the siege of Jerusalem because of the army of Pharaoh, (12) that Jeremiah set out from Jerusalem in the midst of the people on his way to the land of Benjamin to divide a portion from that place. (13) And when he was in the Benjamin Gate, the officer of the guard there whose name was Irijah, the son of Shelemiah the son of Hananiah, seized Jeremiah the prophet, saying, You are deserting to the Chaldeans. (14) And Jeremiah replied, Not true! I am not deserting to the Chaldeans. But he would not listen to him. So Irijah seized Jeremiah and brought him unto the princes. (15) And the princes were enraged at Jeremiah and smote him, and put him in the prison house, the house of Jonathan the scribe which they had converted into a prison.

COMMENTS

When the Chaldeans lifted the siege of Jerusalem in order to deal with the Egyptian threat to their flank, Jeremiah decided to visit his home in Anathoth a few miles north of Jerusalem. He never reached his destination; he was arrested at the Benjamin Gate (north gate) by the sentry and charged with deserting to the Chaldeans (Jeremiah 37:13). The language of the accusation, you are falling away, is perhaps an allusion to Jeremiah's declaration (Jeremiah 21:9) that he that fails away to the Chaldeans. shall live. On the surface the accusation had some degree of plausibility. Jeremiah had openly preached since the beginning of the siege that desertion was the only road to self-preservation (Jeremiah 21:9-10). On the other hand, if Jeremiah now was intending to desert to the Chaldeans, he could not have chosen a more inopportune time. The Chaldeans were gone! They were headed south; Jeremiah was headed north. Thus the charge against the prophet was not only false but somewhat foolish.

Why was Jeremiah leaving the city? The question is not easy to answer mainly because the Hebrew verb used to describe his action can be interpreted in more than one way. According to one view, Jeremiah was about to change his residence back to his home town at Anathoth. This seems to have been the view of the King James translators who render the verb to separate himself thence in the midst of the people. But if Jeremiah was seeking to move his residence to Anathoth, why? Was it that he was attempting to leave Jerusalem the doomed city for the sake of his personal safety? Such motivation would be incongruous with the circumstances and the character of Jeremiah. Less objectionable would be the view that Jeremiah now regarded his ministry in Jerusalem as completed. The crucial phrase in Jeremiah 37:12 can be translated in another way: to take his portion from thence. On this view Jeremiah had some personal business to take care of in Anathoth. A reasonable conjecture is that his business had to do with the purchase of the field mentioned in Jeremiah 32:6-12. Two objectives have been raised against this interpretation: (1) the field in chapter 32 was not to be apportioned or divided as this verb implies, but merely purchased and (2) that purchase had not yet taken place.[326] The former argument is not particularly weighty and the latter argument is completely negated if in fact chapter 32 chronologically precedes chapter 37 as has previously been argued.

[326] Streane, op cit., p. 248.

Commentators are also divided in their interpretation of the phrase in the midst of the people. Did Jeremiah go out of the city in the midst of the people or did he take his portion in the midst of the people? Some commentators see in the people a reference to others who might have been involved in some way in the business transaction which was conducted at Anathoth. But it is better to connect the phrase in the midst of the people with the verb went out. The idea would then be that Jeremiah did not leave the city secretly and alone but publicly and in company with many others, perhaps of those who believed in his prophetic utterances.

Jeremiah protested his arrest; he denied the accusation that he was deserting to the Chaldeans. But Irijah, the chief officer of the guard, brought Jeremiah before the princes of the land for further action. These were not the same princes who had evidenced their respect for Jeremiah on former occasions (e.g. chapter Jeremiah 26:16; Jeremiah 36:19). They had been hauled off to Babylon in the deportation of 597 B.C. along with the king Jehoiachin (Jeremiah 24:1; Jeremiah 28:3; Jeremiah 29:2). Zedekiah's princes would be of a lower origin and type who would be anxious to accept any charge against an unpopular person without proper examination. They remembered the blistering sermons Jeremiah had preached, how he had compared them to a basket of rotten figs (chapter 24), how he had openly advocated surrender to the enemy and individual desertion. Now was their chance to rid themselves of this annoying pest. They ordered the prophet to be beaten[327] and cast into a dungeon in the house of Jonathan, a royal secretary. Just why his house was used as a prison is not revealed. Perhaps other places of detention were full; or perhaps the secretary's house was a maximum security prison for those considered dangerous political offenders. At any rate there were parts of this house that were more than adequate for the purposes of detention. Two words are used to describe the place of imprisonment. The first word is bor, translated dungeon. The word implies a subterranean cavity. The second word is chanuyot, a word which occurs only here and probably means cells. The soft limestone beneath Jerusalem is honeycombed with vaults, caverns, cisterns, tunnels and the like.[328] For many days Jeremiah the prophet of God was confined in this dark, damp, unventilated cell beneath the house of Jonathan the scribe.

[327] Actually it is impossible to tell from the Hebrew verb whether the princes had Jeremiah flogged or struck with the hand in the face. It is not even clear whether the princes caused others to smite Jeremiah or whether they administered the blows themselves.
[328] Laetsch, op. cit., p. 292.