Jeremiah 38:24

ZEDEKIAH PLEDGES JEREMIAH TO SECRECY

"Then said Zedekiah unto Jeremiah, Let no man know of these words, and thou shalt not die. But if the princes hear that I have talked with thee, and they come unto thee, and say unto thee, Declare unto us now what thou has said unto the king; hide it not from us, and we will not put thee to death; also what the king said unto thee: then, thou shalt say unto them, I presented my supplication before the king, that he would not cause me to return to Jonathan's house, to die there. Then came all the princes unto Jeremiah, and asked him; and he told them according to all these words that the king had commanded. So they left off speaking with him; for the matter was not perceived. So Jeremiah abode in the court of the guard until the day that Jerusalem was taken."

"My supplication ... that he would not cause me to return to Jonathan's house, to die there ..." (Jeremiah 38:26). The mention of Jonathan's house in this passage is alleged to support the notion that only one imprisonment is in view in these two chapters; but such a view is a total misunderstanding.

This was a master-stroke on the part of Zedekiah. By the mention of Jeremiah's petition not to be sent back to Jonathan's house, the princes would have concluded immediately that Zedekiah, displeased with their placement of Jeremiah in the miry cistern, had told Jeremiah that he would send him back to the house of Jonathan where Jeremiah would have been silenced as in the second imprisonment; and they would have instantly supposed that this "second plea" of Jeremiah not to be sent back to the house of Jonathan was a response to Zedekiah's threat, a threat that never took place at all, but from this misunderstanding of the real nature of Jeremiah's supplication, doubtless caused them to accept what they understood as Zedekiah's action as compatible with what they desired.

Thus Jeremiah told nothing but the truth, but not all of the truth, and it served the wishes of both Zedekiah and Jeremiah perfectly. We have yet to find the writing of any scholar which acknowledges what to us is the perfect explanation of this episode.

We have no patience whatever with "scholars" who criticize the "ethics of Jeremiah," suggesting that perhaps he told a lie on this occasion. Nonsense! Jeremiah obeyed his king, which he was honor bound to do; what he said was absolutely true. Of course, it was not "the whole truth," but Jeremiah was under no oath nor any responsibility whatever to tell those crooked murderers the "whole truth." It was not Jeremiah's error that his supplication not to be sent back to the house of Jonathan had occurred at the end of the second imprisonment, and not at the end of the third.

One may only marvel at the genius of Zedekiah who arranged this skillful deception of the crooked princes who were his bitterest enemies.

Keil and many other commentators have pointed out that Jeremiah 38:28 here actually belongs to Jeremiah 39, and "forms the introductory sentence of the passage ending in Jeremiah 39:3."[17]