If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.
25 May. Jeremiah chapters 38-41
In chapter 38, Zedekiah (the Jewish king appointed by the Babylonians) first told some of the men at his court that they could do what they liked with Jeremiah, but then when he heard that Jeremiah had been lowered into a pit to starve, had mercy on him at least to the extent of having him brought back up so that he could question him. Zedekiah seems at one point to have accepted Jeremiah’s advice that it would be sensible for him to surrender to the Babylonians rather than hold out to the bitter end and be killed with the rest of his people (although he instructed Jeremiah not to tell anyone this); yet when the siege actually took place (chapter 39) he failed to act on this, and tried to escape from the enemy, only to be taken captive, and blinded after being forced to watch his own sons murdered. Such was the violence of those times (and unfortunately, still of our own times in places like the ‘Democratic’ Republic of Congo or in Syria).
Zedekiah seemed to have the same kind of hating-but-fascinated relationship with Jeremiah that Jezebel had with Elijah, Herod with John the Baptist, Pilate with Jesus, or perhaps Catherine the Great with Rasputin. These monarchs must have had enough of a conscience to have known that the holy men who troubled them had the moral high ground and that their criticism of the king’s or queen’s conduct was right; yet they clung to power without having the courage to mend their ways, for the last thing a ‘strong’ leader wants is to be seen to be weak, and changing your mind or acknowledging when you are beaten is seen as weakness not strength. It is only with God’s perspective on things, as Jeremiah had, that ‘giving in’ can sometimes be seen as the right and courageous thing to do.
We see this in a smaller way in politics when a politician announces a policy that they think is right, but then find opponents even in their own party telling them the policy is a foolish one. Some have the courage then to moderate or abandon the policy, which the media tend to decry as weakness, but may actually be a sign of strength; while others refuse to make the ‘U turn’ and press on with their intentions until they are forced out of office.
Chapters 39-41 tell of the actual captivity of most of the people of Jerusalem and Judah, and the bloody power struggle that went on after the captivity between Gedaliah (Nebuchadnezzar’s puppet ruler) and the remaining army officers of Judah. In all of this, Jeremiah finally gets his reward as he is freed by the Babylonians from among the captives, and allowed to return to Judah a free man.