So Jeremiah abode in the court of the prison until the day that Jerusalem was taken: and he was there when Jerusalem was taken.
He was [there] when Jerusalem was taken. These words are made the beginning of Jeremiah 39:1-18 by many; but the accents and sense support the English version.
Remarks:
(1) The prophet who risked character, liberty, and life in telling the salutary though unwelcome truth to his countrymen, that submission to the King of Babylon was the only way of safety, was condemned to a miry, dark, and loathsome dungeon, as though he sought not the welfare, but the hurt of the state (Jeremiah 38:4). How infatuated are sinners who mistake for enemies those who are their truest friends! The wicked are their own worst enemies so long as they are impenitent, and, therefore, they regard the servants of God as enemies because they tell them so. Until they submit their proud spirits to God's appointed and only way of salvation, there is nothing but destruction before them. The faithful minister tells them this wholesome though mortifying truth, and therefore they hate him. Yet if they would reflect a moment, they would see that, like Jeremiah, the true servant of God can have no selfish aim in telling them unpalatable truth, but can only be influenced by a sincere desire for their salvation: and that their true wisdom and happiness would be to accept salvation, while yet there is time, in God's appointed way. (2) Kingly power and state are eagerly coveted; yet the sovereign is often such only in title: he is in the hands of his princes and ministers. But this does not excuse the monarch who, like Zedekiah, through weakness and pusillanimity, suffers himself to be tempted, by pressure from without, into sanctioning an act of cruelty and injustice, such as was that perpetrated by the princes upon Jeremiah. State necessity and temporizing expediency are not pleas that will stand before Him who ought to have been feared and obeyed rather than man. Pontius Pilate in vain tried by such pleas to wash himself of the guilt of condemning the Holy and the Just One: but to all ages his name shall be handed down to infamy, as it has been for eighteen hundred years past in the Creeds and Confessions of the Church, as the unjust judge under whom the innocent Saviour suffered
(3) At a time when the wrath of the princes was much to be feared, and just after that the king himself yielded to their wishes, one was found who, with fearless magnanimity, faith, and love, braved every danger, in order to rescue the servant of God from certain death (Jeremiah 38:7-10). Ebed-melech, an Ethiopian Gentile, did that which none of Jeremiah's own Jewish countrymen attempted in his behalf, Often God raises up friends to His people from quarters whence least they could expect it. And Ebed-melech's courageous interference in behalf of Jeremiah not only brought deliverance to the prophet, but to himself also subsequently (Jeremiah 39:16). None ever loses by being bold for God. It is true, Jeremiah, like his Antitype, Christ, as the immediate result of his faithfulness, sank for a time in the deep mire (Psalms 69:2); but his God was only trying his faith, and when it was tried enough, brought him forth, as gold from the fiery trial, purified of its dross. While Ebed-melech's boldness in risking his life for God's prophet at that time was the cause of his life being saved ultimately at the time when the enemies of Jeremiah and of God were given to destruction, let us remember and act on the promise, "Whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, shall in nowise lose his reward" (Matthew 10:42).
(4) God can use the most despised instrumentalities for effecting the deliverance of His servants, even as "old cast clouts, and old rotten rags" were made means in the deliverance of Jeremiah from the miry pit (Jeremiah 38:11-13). So in delivering the prisoners of Satan from the pit to which sin has doomed them from their birth, God hath "chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty, and base things of the world, and things which are despised, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are" (1 Corinthians 1:27).
(5) Zedekiah was offered safety by the imprisoned prophet, in the name of the Lord, if he would go for th and submit to the King of Babylon: if he would not, the alternative was destruction to the city by fire, and mutilation of his eyes, with captivity to himself. But he feared that, if he surrendered to the Babylonians, he should be mocked by his former Jewish subjects who had deserted to the Chaldeans. He therefore, through fear of man's sneer, set at nought the command of God and the fear of God. In righteous retribution, God brought upon him the very thing he feared, in its most galling form. By not going forth as God had commanded, through fear of the mocking of men, he, his children, and his wives, were delivered into the hands of the Babylonians; he virtually was the cause of the city being burned with fire: and the very women of his own palace, once the slaves of his will, were loudest and most bitter in their jeers at him, as a fool led into his present plight by the so-called "friends" and princes, whose puppet he was, and as one "sunk in the mire, in just retribution for his having, in his guilty fear of his princes, allowed the prophet to have been "sunk in the mire" (cf. Jeremiah 38:22-23 with Jeremiah 38:6). Let us remember, in times of fear and perplexity, the safest way in the end is that which is suggested by the fear of God rather than the fear of man.