Zedekiah looked around again, but there was no-one nearby listening.  It’s amazing how sometimes you can be almost alone in a crowd.  “So that was what they planned,” he said, drumming with the fingers of his right hand on his knee, and not looking very pleased.  He leaned forward and said to me quietly, “You’re Ebed-Melech, aren’t you?”

I nodded, amazed that he knew my name.  King Zedekiah is really quite a nice person if you keep him away from his friends… but a man chooses his friends.

“I think you are right,” he continued.  “I thought they would just lock him up, but I should have known better.  Alright, take three men – Jehonathan here can get another couple of men to help you; then get Jeremiah out of the cistern as quick as you can.  Preferably before my friends hear anything about it.”  He looked over his shoulder and saw Irijah returning with an unhappy-looking prisoner.  “Go now,” he said urgently, “and, Jehonathan, choose your helpers carefully.  Don’t tell anyone else what is happening until you have Jeremiah safe.  Give him a room in quiet area of the court of the guard – out of the dungeons.”

By this time, Irijah was almost upon us, and Zedekiah looked at us almost apologetically before turning back to him and starting to discuss the next case.  Irijah was looking at us curiously, but it was a curiosity tinged with anger, as if he somehow guessed what we were doing and didn’t like it.

Jehonathan and I turned and walked towards the palace, and on the way I asked him, “Who is Irijah, and why is he so interested in Jeremiah?”

“Irijah is a bitter enemy of Jeremiah’s,” said Jehonathan, “and he would be rejoicing if he knew where Jeremiah is at the moment.  Maybe he does.  He’s always carrying on about trying to get Jeremiah.”

“Why does he hate Jeremiah?” I asked.  Here was yet another enemy I could be making.

“Irijah’s grandfather, Hananiah, was a prophet,” Jehonathan answered.  “A false prophet.  A few years ago, he contradicted Jeremiah’s prophecies and said that the king of Babylon would be defeated and that all of the treasures taken from the temple would be brought back to Jerusalem within two years.  It never happened, of course, but that wasn’t the main point.  A week or two later, Jeremiah said that he had been given a message from God saying that Hananiah had been telling lies while claiming they were prophecies from God.  He said that Hananiah would die before the end of the year.  And get this,” Jehonathan stopped and grabbed my arm, stopping me too; “Hananiah was dead within weeks.”  He let go of my arm and we walked on as he continued, “Irijah blames Jeremiah.  Funny really, because he keeps saying that Jeremiah is telling lies.  Now I would have thought that if he didn’t believe Jeremiah, he wouldn’t believe he had the power to kill his grandfather either.  Anyway, that’s Irijah for you.  Just a year or so ago, he managed to get Jeremiah beaten and locked up for a while[1], but the king freed him that time, too.  If you want my advice, I’d say watch out for Irijah and his friends.  And Shephatiah and his friends too,” he added dryly.

By this time we were back at the palace, and Jehonathan went  to the barracks where the king’s guards live to fetch another couple of men to help, while I went to the storehouse where all the unused items from the palace are stored.  I fetched some old rags and worn-out clothes from there, as well as some ropes, then I went downstairs towards the lowest levels of the palace, the parts that were used as a prison.  When I came to the deepest, darkest level, I found Jehonathan already there with a couple of his friends.  I was glad that they had thought to bring torches, because without them we wouldn’t have seen much.  Even so, it was almost as if the darkness was swallowing up the fitful light of the torches, and the gaping hole in the floor seemed to ooze blackness.

A shallow gutter ran across the floor to the lip of the hole, with a few stones lying across it here and there, part of trying to keep rubbish out of the cistern, I guess.  Beside one of the stones I saw what looked like a dead, desiccated rat, but it was hard to tell in the gloom.  I didn’t look too carefully.  If these were the sorts of things flowing down towards the cistern, I wondered what items had got past the stones and were down there in the cistern with Jeremiah.  More than just mud, I was sure.  Again I felt sorry for Jeremiah in his predicament, and angry with the men who continued to persecute him.

“Jeremiah!” I called, leaning over the dark opening and straining to see anything in the inky depths.

I couldn’t see anything at all, so I was rather glad when I heard his response: “Is that you, Ebed-Melech?  Oh, thank Yahweh!  I never thought to hear anyone’s voice again. I had given up hope.”  His muffled voice sounded tired and there was none of the hope that normally enlivened his voice.

“You’re not going to die this time, Jeremiah,” I replied.  “The king has sent us to get you out of there.”

“How long have I been in here?  It’s so dark in here, I can’t see whether it is day or night,” he croaked.  “What time is it?”

“It’s the middle of the afternoon and as far as I can tell, you have been in there since yesterday morning.  So let’s get you out of there quickly.”

I took one of the ropes and gave it to Jehonathan.  “You take this rope with one of your friends and lower it down to Jeremiah.”

One of the men looked a little doubtful in the flickering torchlight.  “Is that really Jeremiah, the son of Hilkiah, down there?” he asked, and he looked at Jehonathan accusingly.  “You never told me we were going to help him.  He’s a traitor, isn’t he?”

“No, he’s not,” answered Jehonathan.  “You can’t believe everything you’re told, you know.  Who said he was a traitor?”

“Well, it was Pashhur and Irijah,” the man replied.  “They said he is encouraging people to betray us to the Babylonians.”

“No he isn’t,” I said.  “Jeremiah is just telling people that God says we are going to lose this war anyway and that if we give in quietly, we will be treated well, but if we keep fighting we will still lose and everything will be worse for everyone.  That’s not being a traitor, that’s trying to help.”

“Yeah, well,” said the other, “I’m finding it a bit hard to tell the difference.  We’re in the army to fight, and he’s telling everyone to give up.  That doesn’t sound very patriotic.”

“He’s been saying the same sorts of things for a long time now, you know.  And he gets things right, too.  He said the Babylonians would come, and they did.  Forty years ago he started saying they would come, and at the start, everyone laughed at him because no one could imagine Pharaoh letting Babylon run wild in his neck of the woods, but then Nebuchadnezzar came along and people stopped laughing.  Then just a couple of years ago when the army of Pharaoh started to advance towards us, Nebuchadnezzar took his army away from our walls for a while.  Everyone yelled and cheered and rejoiced, but Jeremiah said Nebuchadnezzar would come back with his army, and he was right again.  And what about Irijah’s grandfather, too?  Look, if God says that Nebuchadnezzar is going to conquer Jerusalem, surely it’s pretty stupid to keep fighting – but that’s what your bosses want you to do.  If they would just give in as Jeremiah says, lots more of you soldiers would stay alive.”

It was a long speech.  I don’t normally talk very much, but sometimes things need to be said.  Our leaders – even King Zedekiah – are all too concerned about their own skins and don’t seem to care about anyone else’s.  Anyway, in this case the speech managed to convince Jehonathan’s friends enough that they helped us lower the ropes down to Jeremiah.  By that time, my eyes had got more used to the darkness and I could see that he was up to his waist in wet, slimy mud.  At my insistence, he put some old clothes between his arms and the ropes – I had a suspicion that the mud would not want to let him go, and that we would have to pull pretty hard to lift him out.  And so it proved.  It wasn’t thin, runny mud; nor was it thick, firm earth; it was mud into which you would pretty quickly sink, and then you’d be stuck there.  We started to lift him, but soon realised that meant trying to lift all the mud out of the bottom of the cistern as well.

We pulled, and we pulled, but we weren’t getting far, and it was clear that the ropes were cutting into Jeremiah quite badly.  After a while, Jehonathan told Jeremiah to kick his legs around, and that did the trick.  With various sucking and slurping noises, the mud finally let him go and he was left dangling in mid-air with bits of mud falling off him.

When we got him up to floor level, he really looked a mess: covered with mud from head to foot and looking utterly exhausted.  I’m not sure how much longer he would have lasted in that cistern if we hadn’t come when we did.  You wouldn’t get much sleep if you were waist-deep in slimy mud that would drown you if you didn’t keep your head up.  And he was cold, too: he was shivering and shaking when we finally helped him up over the edge so that he could collapse on the floor.

Poor Jeremiah.  We took him out of those gloomy depths and led him up to ground level where we helped to clean him up a bit.  I insisted that he eat my lunch – there’s precious little of any sort of food left in the city, so he wouldn’t get anything otherwise.  As the king had commanded us, we put Jeremiah into a room where he would feel safe and could recover from his ordeal.

You know, God expects a lot from his servants, particularly when it involves trying to warn others and save their lives.  Yahweh cares, and he wants his worshippers to care too.  I must admit though, I find it hard to care for people like Shephatiah, Gedaliah, Jucal and Pashhur.

So God did protect Jeremiah after all, but it’s a bit funny that he should have done so through me – a foreigner, and a slave – when there are so many members of his chosen people who could have done the job.  Maybe that is one of the reasons why Jerusalem is to be destroyed…

[1] Jeremiah 37:13-15