Now when Ebed-melech the Ethiopian, one of the eunuchs which was in the king's house, heard that they had put Jeremiah in the dungeon; the king then sitting in the gate of Benjamin;
Ebed-melech. This was the Hebrew designation given to this Ethiopian, meaning king's servant. Already, even at this early time, God wished to show what good reason there was for calling the Gentiles to salvation. An Ethiopian stranger saves the prophet whom his own countrymen, the Jews, tried to destroy. So the Gentiles believed in Christ, whereas the Jews, his own countrymen, crucified Him; and Ethiopians were among the earliest converts (Acts 2:10; Acts 2:41; "A man of Ethiopia, an eunuch of great authority under Candace queen of the Ethiopians, who had the charge of all her treasure, and had come to Jerusalem for to worship," was one of the first Gentile proselytes to Judaism who was brought to Christ through Philip's evangelical exposition of the 53rd chapter of Isaiah, Acts 8:27-39). Ebed-melech probably was keeper of the royal harem, and so had private access to the king. The eunuchs over harems in the present day are mostly from Nubia or Abyssinia.