Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
Jeremiah, when Zedekiah consults him and asks him to pray for himself and the city, prophesies that Nebuchadnezzar, who had withdrawn from Jerusalem to fight against Pharaoh, will return and burn Jerusalem. Then, as if he were trying to desert to the Chaldeans, he is captured and thrown into a foul place; but entreating Zedekiah, he obtains from him a more comfortable custody and a daily ration of food.
Vulgate Text: Jeremiah 37:1-20
1. And King Zedekiah the son of Josiah reigned in place of Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim: whom Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had made king in the land of Judah. 2. And neither he, nor his servants, nor the people of the land, obeyed the words of the Lord, which He spoke by the hand of Jeremiah the prophet. 3. And King Zedekiah sent Juchal the son of Shelemiah, and Zephaniah the son of Maaseiah the priest, to Jeremiah the prophet, saying: Pray for us to the Lord our God. 4. Now Jeremiah was walking freely among the people: for they had not yet put him into prison custody. Now the army of Pharaoh had come out of Egypt: and when the Chaldeans who were besieging Jerusalem heard this news, they withdrew from Jerusalem. 5. And the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the prophet, saying: 6. Thus says the Lord God of Israel: Thus shall you say to the king of Judah, who sent you to inquire of me: Behold the army of Pharaoh, which has come out to help you, shall return to its own land in Egypt. 7. And the Chaldeans shall return, and shall fight against this city: and they shall take it, and burn it with fire. 8. Thus says the Lord: Do not deceive yourselves, saying: The Chaldeans will surely go away and withdraw from us; for they will not go away. 9. But even if you were to strike down the whole army of the Chaldeans who are fighting against you, and there should remain of them only a few wounded: each one would rise from his tent, and set this city on fire. 10. Therefore when the army of the Chaldeans had withdrawn from Jerusalem on account of the army of Pharaoh, 11. Jeremiah went out from Jerusalem to go into the land of Benjamin, and to divide his property there in the sight of the citizens. 12. And when he had come to the gate of Benjamin, there was a guard of the gate on duty, named Irijah, the son of Shelemiah the son of Hananiah, and he seized Jeremiah the prophet, saying: You are deserting to the Chaldeans. 13. And Jeremiah answered: It is false, I am not deserting to the Chaldeans. And he did not listen to him: but Irijah seized Jeremiah, and brought him to the princes. 14. Therefore the princes, being angry with Jeremiah, had him beaten and put him in prison, which was in the house of Jonathan the scribe: for he was in charge of the prison. 15. So Jeremiah entered the house of the pit and the dungeon: and Jeremiah sat there many days: 16. then King Zedekiah sent and took him: and questioned him secretly in his house, and said: Is there a word from the Lord? And Jeremiah said: There is. And he said: You shall be delivered into the hands of the king of Babylon. 17. And Jeremiah said to King Zedekiah: What have I sinned against you, and against your servants, and against this people, that you have put me in prison? 18. Where are your prophets, who prophesied to you and said: The king of Babylon will not come against you, or against this land? 19. Now therefore hear, I beseech you, my lord the king: Let my supplication prevail in your sight: and do not send me back to the house of Jonathan the scribe, lest I die there. 20. So King Zedekiah commanded that Jeremiah be committed to the court of the prison, and that a loaf of bread be given to him daily, besides broth, until all the bread in the city should be consumed: and Jeremiah remained in the court of the prison.
Verse 6
6. Behold the army of Pharaoh, etc., shall return to Egypt. The Rabbis relate that, when the Egyptians already had their fleet at sea, at God's nod there appeared upon the sea inflated skins, in the likeness of human entrails, driven about on the sea, and the Egyptians said among themselves: 'These are our Egyptian ancestors, who were drowned in the sea on account of those Jews; and are we now going to help them? They halted therefore, and turned back.' These are the fables of Rabbi Solomon.
Note: This prophecy occurred under Zedekiah, near the time of the siege of Jerusalem, and therefore happened long after that of the preceding chapter; for that occurred under Jehoiakim. For in Jeremiah there is frequent hysteron proteron: because his prophecies were compiled into one volume without maintaining their order, as I said at the beginning in the chronological table. The things written here and in the following chapters by Jeremiah are histories so clear that anyone who wishes to shed light on them by a long interpretation would rather obscure them and cast a fog over them.
Verse 8
8. Do not deceive yourselves, that is, first, do not falsely persuade yourselves that the Chaldeans will go away entirely. Second, 'your souls,' that is, your lives: for the Chaldeans returning will snatch these from you, or so afflict you that you would prefer to die rather than live. Third, 'your souls,' that is, yourselves, so that it is a synecdoche.
Going they will go away, that is, they will go away entirely so as to return no more.
Verse 9
9. But even if you were to strike down the whole army of the Chaldeans, that is, so fixed and certain is God's decree concerning the destruction of Jerusalem, that even if the Chaldeans were slaughtered by the Egyptians, as you hope, or by you, so that few would escape this disaster, and those gravely wounded; God would still through them lay low the ranks of the Jews, and burn the city. So hard it is to have God as an adversary, and to fight or struggle against Him is to kick against the goad. So Sanchez.
Verse 11
11. And to divide his property there, not to his sons, as the Chaldee paraphrase holds, for he had none; for he remained a virgin, as I said in chapter 16, verse 2, but to his brothers and relatives. Or so that the property which had perhaps fallen to him, or the field which he had bought from Hanameel, chapter 32, verse 9, he might measure off and divide from the other neighboring fields. So St. Thomas, Lyranus and Dionysius.
But the field poses a difficulty, because that field was purchased later, namely when Jeremiah was imprisoned (who here in verse 4 is said to have been free, whence he also wished to leave the city, verse 10), namely in the tenth year of Zedekiah, when shortly after Jerusalem was captured, as is clear from chapter 32, verses 1 and 2. Moreover, this division of goods would have been done almost in vain, since they were soon to become the spoils of the Chaldean conqueror: yet Jeremiah could have offered it as a pretext for his departure, as I shall say shortly.
Second, Sanchez explains it thus, that is: Jeremiah went out from Jerusalem, to divide his home and dwelling from the people of Jerusalem, that is, to withdraw from the people who were about to be devastated and perish: and to divide in the sight of the citizens is nothing other than to prepare his flight or departure while the citizens watched. This sense is clearer in the Hebrew; for from the Hebrew it can be rendered thus with Vatablus and Pagninus, that he might slip away thence in the midst of the people, that is, in the manner of a slippery thing, he might glide out of the city in the midst of the people, who were pouring out of the city in crowds now that the siege had been lifted. Or, that he might separate himself from the people, that is, that he might withdraw from the city. For Jeremiah, seeing that Zedekiah and the nobles were offended with him, and were preparing prisons and other harsher measures; at the same time foreseeing that shortly after Jerusalem, and all that was in it, would be devastated, wisely wished to look after himself, and on the occasion of arranging his affairs, to go to Anathoth, and to remove himself from Jerusalem, so as to rescue himself from destruction. The Septuagint translates: That he might buy something there in the midst of the people, that is, in the market, which Theodoret explains, that is: That he might buy bread; for there was famine in the city, which had been besieged shortly before.
Verse 12
12. Irijah. He was the grandson, that is, the son of the son, of Hananiah (as is stated here), against whom Jeremiah had threatened death, chapter 28, verse 16, and therefore his grandson Irijah, to avenge his grandfather's death, hostile to Jeremiah, here seizes him. So Rabbi Solomon, Lyranus and others.
14. They beat him, either with fists, or, as Rabanus, St. Thomas and Lyranus say, with scourges, and so Jeremiah was a type of Christ who was scourged.
Note here how pernicious is rash suspicion, and precipitate judgment. From the fact that Jeremiah was leaving the city, the suspicious Irijah said: 'You are deserting to the Chaldeans.' The princes too believe it, and they beat and imprison the innocent Jeremiah. Eli sinned in this regard, who rebuked Hannah as she sighed to God, thinking her drunk and intoxicated; and the Pharisees who slandered Christ, calling Him a glutton, a wine-drinker, a demoniac, because He reclined at table with publicans and sinners, and cured diseases.
More gravely did Theodosius Junior the Emperor sin, who, because of an apple given by his wife Eudoxia as a gift to Paulinus, a most noble man, suspecting adultery, ordered him to be killed though innocent, and removed Eudoxia from their marital bed. And Constantine the Great, who, when his son Crispus was falsely accused of incest by his wife, immediately ordered him to be killed. Melancholic people suffer from this malady, because from a shadow they immediately portend grave evils. For melancholy, being a dark humor, is sad, timid, suspicious, malignant. Therefore they must deliberately fight against it, and immediately dispel all phantoms of suspicion that enter the mind: for, as Blessed Dorotheus says, 'a faulty ruler makes even straight things crooked.'
The same Blessed Dorotheus relates that a guardian of the domestic garden suspected a certain Religious brother of having stolen apples from the garden, and that he had then gone to the Holy Communion; he accused him before the Superior. The Superior, having examined the matter, recognized the Religious's innocence, and publicly and most severely rebuked and shamed the suspicious gardener before all. St. Francis, coming upon a poor beggar, when his companion said to him: Perhaps this man feigns his poverty and is rich; immediately commanded him to kneel and beg the beggar's pardon, and to cover his naked body with his own garment. Cassian, book 5 of the Institutes of Renunciation, chapter 20, relates that Machates, a holy man, but of too severe and suspicious judgment, was thus punished and corrected by God: 'Machates, says Cassian, when he was instructing us that we should judge no one, said that there were three things in which
says Cassian, when instructing us that we should judge no one, said there were three things in which he had criticized or rebuked the brothers; first, that some of them allowed themselves to have a grape removed; second, that they had a cloak in their cells; third, that they gave blessed oil to lay people who asked for it. Whence by the just judgment of God he said that he had incurred all these same things himself; for contracting an illness of the grape and wasting away, I was forced, he said, to allow it to be cut off; on account of which illness also, I was forced to have a cloak; and also to bless oil and give it to those who begged for it, since I could not by any other means escape their importunate requests.' Whence he concludes: 'From which it was made manifestly clear to me that a monk is bound by the same faults and vices in which he has presumed to judge others.'
Verse 15
15. Into the house of the pit, into a prison, which because it was foul, dark, stinking, muddy, deep and horrible, was like a pit, a cistern, a tomb and hell. So Joseph is said to have descended into a pit, that is into a prison pit, Wisdom 10:13, and Daniel, chapter 6, is said to have been thrown into a den of lions. Therefore Jeremiah, lest he be worn out by its squalor, begs to be taken out; whence he was transferred to the court as a more comfortable place, in the last verse. So among all nations prisons, being horrible, portended a slow death; hence at Athens the prison was called 'barathrum,' and by Christ 'outer darkness;' not because it was outside the city, but 'outer,' that is, extreme and supremely dark. Prison was also called 'ergastulum,' as if to say a workplace, because in prison slaves in chains had to work, such as grinding, baking, and completing their assigned quota of work. But these things could not be done in the pit; it is nevertheless called here 'ergastulum' by common usage and custom.
This is the third imprisonment of Jeremiah. For first he was put in prison, chapter 20, verse 2, by Pashhur the son of Immer, but was released the next day; second, he was imprisoned, chapter 32, verse 3, by King Zedekiah; third, here. Nicephorus writes, book 8, chapter 30, that the Emperor Constantine adorned this pit or dungeon of Jeremiah with a wonderful structure.
Verse 16
16. Is there perhaps a word from the Lord? That is: Do you say from yourself that the city is to be burned, or are you inspired by God? So Hugo and Vatablus. Or rather, because he knew him to be a Prophet of the Lord, that is: Is there perhaps some new word from God? For Zedekiah desired to hear something milder, and favouring his stubbornness, a new oracle. So from the Hebrew and the Septuagint, Theodoret, St. Thomas, Lyranus and a Castro. Whence Jeremiah answers: It has been newly revealed to me that you shall be delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon.
Verse 18
18. Where are they, that is: From the outcome see that I am the true Prophet, who predicted the coming of the Chaldeans, as you now see they have come, and that those are false and lying prophets who denied it. So Theodoret, St. Thomas and Lyranus.
Verse 19
19. May my supplication prevail in your sight, that is, allow yourself, my king, to be entreated by me; yield to my supplication.
Verse 20
20. In the court of the prison, in the courtyard of the common prison; therefore Jeremiah was not in the cells of those in chains, as Rabbi David holds, who explains 'in the court of the prison' by a hypallage, that is, 'In the prison which was in the court,' but in the courtyard, as in open custody, and this by God's providence, so that the citizens could more easily come to him and hear him there. Hence in this courtyard he bought the field from Hanameel, and made the documents of purchase, chapter 32.
A loaf, in Hebrew kickar, that is, a round and circular bread, which is called a 'torta' as if to say twisted, and wound into a circle. Hence also a talent, because it is circular, is called kickar.
Besides broth, that is, a side dish, or food that is added to porridge or bread. For the ancients, being temperate, used porridge instead of bread, as I said on Genesis chapter 25, verse 29, that is, Zedekiah was generous in feeding Jeremiah; for in a public famine he ordered that a loaf of bread be given to him, and broth without measure.
Otherwise the Septuagint, the Chaldee, Pagninus and Vatablus translate, namely: And he gave him a loaf of bread (namely, bought) from the street or quarter of the bakers, that is, he gave him a loaf of common bread, which the bakers baked daily for the royal servants, in a fixed quantity and weight. For this is kickar or loaf.
Jeremiah remained (until the capture of the city) in the court of the prison. Rightly could Jeremiah then, and can he now especially, glory with St. Paul in his frequent and continuous imprisonments and chains, and say with him: 'I, a prisoner in the Lord,' Ephesians 4:1. And: 'In labors more abundant, in prisons more frequently, in stripes above measure, in deaths often,' 2 Corinthians 11:23.
So recently in Japan the martyr Michael was glorified by these same sufferings in the year of our Lord 1609, as he said thus: 'For four years I was in prison, so joyful and cheerful, that it seemed to me as though it had been only one day. I cannot match with words the kindness of God toward me, that I was captured for His faith; namely that that most august Majesty deigned from that day, as it were, to come and take possession of my soul and body. From then on I was always in the greatest peace. My heart burned with an inestimable desire, always to conform myself exactly to every nod of God, in prosperity and adversity.' And again: 'However much the world might despise, oppress, vex, and afflict me, I resolved to give no weight to any of these things. For I know well enough that mockeries, contempts, disdains, and all manner of injuries patiently borne for the love of God, are to be preferred infinitely over the scepters and diadems of all kings and emperors.'