September 24, 2024 | Be God's Light
Jeremiah is Thrown into a Prison
Scripture: Jeremiah 37(NIV)
1 Zedekiah son of Josiah was made king of Judah by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon; he reigned in place of Jehoiachin son of Jehoiakim. 2 Neither he nor his attendants nor the people of the land paid any attention to the words the Lord had spoken through Jeremiah the prophet.
3 King Zedekiah, however, sent Jehukal son of Shelemiah with the priest Zephaniah son of Maaseiah to Jeremiah the prophet with this message: “Please pray to the Lord our God for us.”
4 Now Jeremiah was free to come and go among the people, for he had not yet been put in prison. 5 Pharaoh’s army had marched out of Egypt, and when the Babylonians who were besieging Jerusalem heard the report about them, they withdrew from Jerusalem.
6 Then the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the prophet: 7 “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: Tell the king of Judah, who sent you to inquire of me, ‘Pharaoh’s army, which has marched out to support you, will go back to its own land, to Egypt. 8 Then the Babylonians will return and attack this city; they will capture it and burn it down.’
9 “This is what the Lord says: Do not deceive yourselves, thinking, ‘The Babylonians will surely leave us.’ They will not! 10 Even if you were to defeat the entire Babylonian army that is attacking you and only wounded men were left in their tents, they would come out and burn this city down.”
11 After the Babylonian army had withdrawn from Jerusalem because of Pharaoh’s army, 12 Jeremiah started to leave the city to go to the territory of Benjamin to get his share of the property among the people there. 13 But when he reached the Benjamin Gate, the captain of the guard, whose name was Irijah son of Shelemiah, the son of Hananiah, arrested him and said, “You are deserting to the Babylonians!”
14 “That’s not true!” Jeremiah said. “I am not deserting to the Babylonians.” But Irijah would not listen to him; instead, he arrested Jeremiah and brought him to the officials. 15 They were angry with Jeremiah and had him beaten and imprisoned in the house of Jonathan the secretary, which they had made into a prison.
16 Jeremiah was put into a vaulted cell in a dungeon, where he remained a long time. 17 Then King Zedekiah sent for him and had him brought to the palace, where he asked him privately, “Is there any word from the Lord?”
“Yes,” Jeremiah replied, “you will be delivered into the hands of the king of Babylon.”
18 Then Jeremiah said to King Zedekiah, “What crime have I committed against you or your attendants or this people, that you have put me in prison? 19 Where are your prophets who prophesied to you, ‘The king of Babylon will not attack you or this land’? 20 But now, my lord the king, please listen. Let me bring my petition before you: Do not send me back to the house of Jonathan the secretary, or I will die there.”
21 King Zedekiah then gave orders for Jeremiah to be placed in the courtyard of the guard and given a loaf of bread from the street of the bakers each day until all the bread in the city was gone. So Jeremiah remained in the courtyard of the guard.
Devotional
Yesterday we read how King Jehoiakim burned the scrolls that contained the words of Jeremiah. Things didn’t get any better for Jeremiah under King Zedekiah. Verse 2 says, “Neither he nor his attendants nor the people of the land paid any attention to the words the Lord had spoken through Jeremiah the prophet.”
Times were tense in Judah. The power struggle between the Egyptian and Babylonian world powers raged on. Jerusalem was caught in the geographical and political middle. King Zedekiah threw his support toward Egypt. Jeremiah warned him that this would backfire, and Babylon would return to burn Jerusalem to the ground.
Jeremiah saw that things in Jerusalem were relatively calm, with Egypt and Babylon both backing away for a while. So he decided to get out of Dodge to claim some family land. But on his way out of town, he was arrested, accused of trying to defect to the enemy, beaten, and thrown into a dungeon for a long time. Jeremiah had no intention of leaving his people. He only desired for them to stop leaving God. It's an interesting thing about hearing hard truths. Often our first response is to shoot the messenger.
When Jesus sent out His twelve disciples for ministry, He warned them that they would be persecuted by everyone from family members to government leaders (see Matthew 10:16-23). Saying yes to God does not guarantee a Sunday stroll down Easy Street. Sometimes it means following Jesus down the Via Dolorosa, “the way of sorrowful suffering” that Jesus walked on the way to His crucifixion.
Jeremiah had been prophesying for forty years when the events in today’s reading took place. A year later, Babylon would return and finish off Jerusalem. From his dungeon cell, Jeremiah the weeping prophet must have mourned for his people, too stubborn to change their hearts and turn back to God.
How does today’s reading impact you in your world today?
Poem
In Prison I Am Free
Though bolted, chained and caged like beast
Though guarded by the sentries
Though stone is sealed, and death is marked
In prison I am free
Though mocked and beaten fierce with canes
Though lions circle round me
Though fiery furnace threatens life
In prison I am free
Though persecuted, thrown to beasts
Though cut in half or stoned
Though crucified, abandoned, lone
In prison I am free
