Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
From prison Jeremiah, urging the people to surrender, is thrown into a muddy pit, but is freed by Ebed-Melech the Ethiopian. Second, verse 14, asked secretly by Zedekiah, he advises him to surrender to the Chaldean; again he is thrown into the court of the prison, bound hand and foot, and remains there until the destruction of the city.
Vulgate Text: Jeremiah 38:1-18
1. Now Shephatiah the son of Mattan, and Gedaliah the son of Pashhur, and Juchal the son of Shelemiah, and Pashhur the son of Malchijah, heard the words that Jeremiah was speaking to all the people, saying: 2. Thus says the Lord: Whoever remains in this city shall die by the sword, and by famine, and by pestilence: but whoever goes out to the Chaldeans shall live, and his life shall be safe and sound. 3. Thus says the Lord: This city shall surely be delivered into the hand of the army of the king of Babylon, and he shall take it. 4. And the princes said to the king: We ask that this man be put to death: for he deliberately weakens the hands of the men of war who remain in this city, and the hands of all the people, speaking to them according to these words: for this man does not seek the peace of this people, but their harm. 5. And King Zedekiah said: Behold, he is in your hands: for it is not right for the king to refuse you anything. 6. So they took Jeremiah, and threw him into the cistern of Malchijah the son of Hammelech, which was in the court of the prison: and they lowered Jeremiah by ropes into the cistern, in which there was no water, but mud: and so Jeremiah sank into the mire. 7. Now Ebed-Melech the Ethiopian, a eunuch, who was in the king's house, heard that they had put Jeremiah into the cistern: and the king was sitting in the gate of Benjamin. 8. And Ebed-Melech went out from the king's house, and spoke to the king, saying: 9. My lord the king, these men have done evil in all that they have perpetrated against Jeremiah the prophet, throwing him into the cistern, to die there of famine: for there is no more bread in the city. 10. So the king commanded Ebed-Melech the Ethiopian, saying: Take with you from here thirty men: and lift Jeremiah the prophet out of the cistern before he dies. 11. So Ebed-Melech took the men with him, and went into the king's house, into the part that was below the storehouse: and he took from there old rags, and worn-out tattered cloths, and lowered them by ropes to Jeremiah in the cistern. 12. And Ebed-Melech the Ethiopian said to Jeremiah: Put the old rags, and these torn and rotten cloths, under the bend of your arms, and over the ropes: and so Jeremiah did. 13. And they drew Jeremiah up with ropes, and brought him out of the cistern: and Jeremiah remained in the court of the prison. 14. And King Zedekiah sent, and took Jeremiah the prophet to himself at the third entrance, which was in the house of the Lord: and the king said to Jeremiah: I ask you a question; hide nothing from me. 15. And Jeremiah said to Zedekiah: If I tell you, will you not put me to death? And if I give you counsel, you will not listen to me. 16. So King Zedekiah swore to Jeremiah secretly, saying: As the Lord lives, who made our souls, I will not put you to death, nor will I deliver you into the hands of these men who seek your life. 17. And Jeremiah said to Zedekiah: Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: If you go out to the princes of the king of Babylon, your life shall be spared, and this city shall not be burned with fire: and you shall be saved, you and your house. 18. But if you do not go out to the princes of the king of Babylon, this city shall be delivered into the hands of the Chaldeans, and they shall burn it with fire: and you shall not escape from their hand
Verse 19
19. And King Zedekiah said to Jeremiah: I am concerned about the Jews who have deserted to the Chaldeans: lest I be delivered into their hands, and they mock me. 20. And Jeremiah answered: They will not deliver you; listen, I beg, to the voice of the Lord, which I speak to you, and it will go well with you, and your soul shall live. 21. But if you refuse to go out: this is the word which the Lord has shown me: 22. Behold all the women who have remained in the house of the king of Judah shall be led out to the princes of the king of Babylon; and they shall say: Your peaceful friends have seduced you, and have prevailed against you, they have plunged your feet in the mire and on slippery ground, and have withdrawn from you. 23. And all your wives and your sons shall be led out to the Chaldeans: and you shall not escape their hands, but you shall be taken by the hand of the king of Babylon: and he shall burn this city with fire. 24. Then Zedekiah said to Jeremiah: Let no one know these words, and you shall not die. 25. But if the princes hear that I have spoken with you, and come to you and say: Tell us what you said to the king, do not hide it from us, and we will not kill you: and what the king said to you: 26. You shall say to them: I prostrated my prayers before the king, that he would not order me sent back to the house of Jonathan, to die there. 27. So all the princes came to Jeremiah and questioned him: and he spoke to them according to all the words the king had commanded him, and they left him alone: for nothing had been overheard. 28. And Jeremiah remained in the court of the prison until the day that Jerusalem was taken: and it came to pass that Jerusalem was taken.
Verse 2
2. His life shall be safe. In Hebrew, his life shall be as spoil; in the Chaldee, as an escape; in the Septuagint, as gain. Namely it shall be as spoil snatched from the hands of enemies; for already the city, your lives and your goods are as it were in the hands of the Chaldeans.
4. He weakens the hands, he dissolves the spirits and strength of the citizens, so that they throw down their arms, because he prophesies that the Chaldeans will prevail over them.
5. For it is not right for the king to refuse you anything. The Septuagint, reading otam instead of elchem, translates: Because the king could not resist them, as though the Prophet excuses the king.
Verse 6
6. So he sank, that is, he was submerged. So the Hebrews.
Into the mire. Josephus, book 10 of the Antiquities, chapter 10: Into a muddy pit, he says, they lowered Jeremiah by a rope, to die there by suffocation; but he remained there, submerged up to the neck. Therefore Jeremiah was here a type of Christ, who says, Psalm 68:2: 'I have sunk in deep mire: and there is no solid ground.'
Note: These pits were wells or cisterns for collecting water, either from a spring or from rain, and therefore they were frequent in Judea, and there is frequent mention of them in Scripture. Some people then used these for the custody of criminals, or rather for their punishment, namely to consume them there by filth, decay and famine in a slow death. Such seems to have been this pit, which was originally a well or cistern of Malchijah; then because it was next to the prison, it was adapted for the custody of criminals, or rather for their punishment. These were muddy because, being open above, they caught the rain, which mixed with the bottom of the pit, made mud and mire. They were also deep; hence they lowered criminals into them with ropes, as they lowered Jeremiah here. Hence they were like a barathrum, and exhibited the type and image of hell. Such seems to have been the old cistern into which Joseph was thrown by his brothers, to die there, Genesis 37, and David, Psalm 87:7: 'They have laid me, he says, in the lower pit: in the dark places, and in the shadow of death.' And Psalm 39: 'He drew me out of the pit of misery, and out of the miry clay.' And of Christ freeing the fathers from limbo, Zechariah says, chapter 9: 'You have sent forth your prisoners from the pit in which there is no water.' So Abulensis on Matthew chapter 25, question 558, and Sanchez.
Note morally: God is most present when things appear completely desperate and hopeless, if He is earnestly invoked. Who would not have thought it was all over for Jeremiah, when by the common consent of the king and princes he was thrown into the pit? But God was with him, as He had promised him in chapter 1, and strengthened him. For this is what Jeremiah, giving thanks to God, says in Lamentations chapter 3, verse 57: 'You drew near in the day when I called upon You (in the pit, as was preceded): You said: Do not fear.' Therefore He raised up Ebed-Melech the Ethiopian, who might turn the king's mind, and draw Jeremiah out of the pit.
Marvel here and imitate the long patience and constancy of Jeremiah: after beatings, after the stocks, after the pit, he again prophesies the same things.
Paganism admired Socrates as the most patient of men, and therefore the wisest: for Socrates, according to Laertius, when told that someone was assailing him with curses, said: 'He has not learned to speak well;' when another said to him: 'Is not this man cursing you?' 'No,' he said, 'because those faults are not in me.' When Xanthippe his wife had first poured abuse, then dirty water upon him, he said: 'Did I not say that when Xanthippe thunders, she would eventually rain?' When Alcibiades said that Xanthippe was intolerable, being so ill-tempered: 'Well,' he said, 'I am now accustomed to it, as if I were constantly hearing the noise of pulleys: but do you not tolerate geese making a racket with their honking?' When the other said: 'But they produce eggs and chicks for me:' 'And Xanthippe,' he said, 'produces children for me.' He used to advise that one should live with a wife of harsh temperament as horsemen do with spirited horses. For 'just as they, once they have mastered them, easily manage the rest: so for me too, after the practice of Xanthippe, the toleration of other mortals will come easily.' Hence the Pythia said: 'Of mortals, Socrates alone truly has wisdom.' But what is Socrates compared to Jeremiah? who endured not one Xanthippe, but kings, princes, and all the Jews persecuting him, so many years so patiently and bravely? For indeed to a servant of God 'affliction of the flesh is a feast of the spirit,' as the author of the Life of Blessed Peter Damian says, chapter 19.
Verse 7
7. Ebed-Melech. Rabbi Solomon thinks this is not a proper name, but a common title of office. For Ebed-Melech in Hebrew means the same as servant of the king, namely par excellence, that is, the keeper of the royal chamber and bedroom. For he is called in Greek a eunuch. Again, Rabbi Solomon translates 'the Ethiopian' as 'of the Ethiopian,' so that the meaning would be: Now the servant of King Zedekiah the Ethiopian heard, that is, of the wicked one, black with vices like an Ethiopian. So the Poet says:
This man is black: Roman, beware of him.
And Amos, chapter 9, verse 7: 'Are you not like the children of the Ethiopians to me, O children of Israel?' But far better and more truly does our translator render: 'Now Ebed-Melech the Ethiopian heard.'
Eunuch, that is, courtier; the Chaldee says, a great man. See what was said on chapter 29, verse 1. Hence this eunuch freely opposed the princes, and freed Jeremiah; whence he received a reward from God, so that shortly after he heard from Jeremiah that he would escape unharmed in the disaster of the city, chapter 39, verse 16, while the other courtiers were then killed, as is clear from the following chapter, verse 6.
Verse 9
9. To die there (in the pit) of famine, for there is no more bread in the city. For the first priority is to distribute all the bread supply to the citizens, since it is little and scarce; so Jeremiah, neglected in the pit, will die there of famine as well as filth, especially since the nobles desire his death. The Chaldee and Sanchez explain these words differently.
10. Take with you from here thirty men. For thirty the Hebrew is biadecha, that is, who are in your hand and power, who are under your authority as their commander. Whence this seems to have been a military guard to repel the force of the nobles, who were Jeremiah's enemies, if they had wished to prevent his being taken out of the pit. For to extract Jeremiah from the pit, three or four men would have sufficed.
Verse 11
11. Which was below the storehouse, that is, in that part of the house which was below the pantry, where discarded items were thrown, and old torn garments of servants, and rags, and cloths for wiping vessels.
12. Put, etc., under the bend (under the armpits) of your hands, that is, of your arms (it is a synecdoche), old rags, lest you be injured being pulled up by bare ropes.
Hence it seems that Jeremiah was thrown into the pit naked or in tatters and half-naked; for otherwise he would have placed his garments under the ropes, and would not have needed these rags. Hence tropologically Jeremiah here bears the image of a sinner, who having fallen into the pit of sin, cannot rise from it by himself, but must be pulled out.
Allegorically St. Ambrose, book 2 On the Holy Spirit, chapter 11: 'In the name of the Ethiopian Ebed-Melech, he says, there is a most beautiful figure; because we, namely sinners from the Gentiles, black before with sins, and formerly unfruitful, lifted out of the deep the prophetic word, which the Jews had cast down as into the mire of their mind and flesh; and therefore it is written: Ethiopia shall stretch out its hands to God.' For just as against Jeremiah his own citizens, namely the Jews, were impious, while pious were Ebed-Melech the Ethiopian, and Nebuzaradan the Chaldean: so also against Christ, the Gentiles were pious, the Jews impious.
Tropologically St. Gregory, book 25 of the Moralia, chapter 8: It is necessary, he says, that old rags be present, by which the ropes may be better held, that is, 'it is necessary that we be strengthened by the examples of those who went before, lest subtle precepts wound the weak and timid among us while lifting them up.' See Hebrews 11:36. Hear also Bachiarius in his letter to Januarius On the Lapsed: 'Let us send, he says, old rags to the one who has fallen, that is, let us bring back to his memory the examples of the ancients, who having fallen into sin, were afterwards raised from the depths of evils through repentance to the heights, lest he despair.' So also Blessed Peter Damian explains, book 6, letter 31, where among other things he adds: 'A servant of God should fear when he receives something temporal, and rejoice when he loses it.' Therefore a Christian should rejoice in adversity, and fear in prosperity.
Morally, learn here how pleasing it is to God to visit and free prisoners, especially the just. Behold Ebed-Melech, because he freed Jeremiah from prison, alone escaped the disaster of Jerusalem by God's oracle, as will appear in chapter 39, verse 16.
St. Paulinus, Bishop of Nola, in order to ransom the son of a widow captured by the Vandals, gave himself up to them as a slave in his place. Hence he became the gardener of the king's son-in-law, and predicted the king's death to him; indeed the king in a dream saw him sitting as a judge on a throne, and taking the whip from him: whence revering him, he dismissed him with honor and a gift, granting him all the captives of his city, whom he sent back to Nola on ships laden with grain in gratitude to St. Paulinus, as St. Augustine reports, book 1 of the City of God, chapter 10, and St. Gregory, book 3 of the Dialogues, chapter 1.
St. Sanctulus offered himself to the Lombards as a hostage and prisoner in place of a captured Deacon. The Deacon was released and went free. Therefore the Lombards threatened Sanctulus with death, and when the executioner raised his sword to cut off his head, he could not swing it or bring it down. Whence recognizing the holiness of Sanctulus, they asked him to release the hand and the sword: which he refused to do, unless the executioner swore that he would henceforth kill no Christian. He swore, and Sanctulus released his hand; whereupon they freed him, and at his petition all the captives. Thus when one man offered himself to prison and death for one, he freed many from prison and death. So St. Gregory, Dialogues 3, chapter 37.
In the time of the Emperor Tiberius, in the year of Christ 566, Abbot Leo said he would become a king; the brothers laughed at him. But when barbarians, invading the Oasis, had captured three abbots, who were infirm, Leo offered himself as their slave in exchange to ransom them; so the three were freed. Leo was carried off by the barbarians, and when he could not continue further because of weakness, the barbarians beheaded him. Thus he truly became a king, because he laid down his life for his friends. So Baronius from Sophronius.
The same Sophronius, chapter 115, relates of Abbot Nicholas, that for a young man from Tyre captured by the Saracens, he first offered a ransom, then himself; and when they refused both, he prayed, saying: 'Our Savior Christ God, save Your servant,' and immediately the Saracens, filled with a demon, cut themselves to pieces with their own swords. The young man therefore went free with him, and having renounced the world, after he had spent seven years in the habit, he passed away.
Acacius Bishop of Amida sold the vessels of the Church to ransom and feed seven thousand Persians, although they were enemies, captured by the Romans and wasting away with famine; wherefore the Persians marveled at the Romans, who made it their aim to conquer both in war and in acts of kindness at the same time. So Socrates, book 7, chapter 21.
Deogratias Bishop of Carthage sold the sacred vessels to ransom Christians captured by the Vandals. So Victor of Utica, book 1 on the Vandals.
Caesarius Bishop of Arles did the same, in the year of Christ 508, as his Life written by Cyprian his disciple reports.
St. Rembert, Archbishop of Bremen, did the same, as his Life found in Surius, February 4, where it is also related that by his prayers the chain of a certain captive woman was miraculously broken.
St. Anianus Bishop of Orleans, as his Life found in Surius, November 17, relates: while he was about to enter the city in solemn ceremony for his inauguration, he asked Agrippinus, the prefect of the city, to give him all the prisoners as a gift. When Agrippinus refused, he was gravely wounded by debris falling from on high, and immediately realized that this had happened because he had rejected the Bishop's prayers. Therefore, having been carried back to his house by servants, he sends for the Bishop to be summoned; for death seemed imminent due to excessive loss of blood. The Bishop comes, imprints the sign of the cross on the wound with his hand, the bleeding stops, strength returns to the man who had been almost given up for lost; the prisons are opened, and the wretched prisoners go out, vindicated to freedom by the intercession of the blessed Bishop Anianus.
Finally hear what Hugo of Cluny writes about St. Hugh the Abbot in his Life: Sancho, the brother of Alfonso king of Spain, had deprived him of his kingdom, and having captured and chained him, had committed him to prison. But pious Hugh, having compassion on him, kept pressing the Lord with prayers on his behalf, and trusting in the apostle's merits, begged the Lord to free him. Without delay: Blessed Peter the Apostle appeared to a certain brother at Cluny, and revealed that God had accepted Hugh's prayers for Alfonso's rescue; he also had this announced to Alfonso in prison. Moreover, he commanded Sancho in a dream, under grave threat, to restore Alfonso quickly, and that he should not dare to delay. Sancho, seized with terror, immediately restored Alfonso; who, being restored, gave thanks to God and to his liberator Hugh, and doubled the tribute which his father King Ferdinand had established to be paid annually to the monastery of Cluny, rendering two hundred and forty gold ounces annually.
Verse 13
13. And Jeremiah remained in the court of the prison, bound hand and foot until the destruction of the city. For when the city was captured, Nebuzaradan freed him from these bonds, chapter 40, verse 4.
14. To the third entrance, which was in the house of the Lord. In Hebrew, to the third entrance, that is, to the third gate of the temple, which faced the palace, through which the king entered the temple from the palace. So Vatablus, Rabbi David and Maldonatus.
Otherwise Lyranus, Dionysius and a Castro. The first entrance, he says, was for the women, the second for the men, this third for the priests. But through that one a lay king could not enter, nor was it the private place which the king was seeking here; but the common and public entrance of the priests.
I ask you a question. What the king's question was is not stated, but from Jeremiah's answer it is clear that it was this: Will Jerusalem and I be captured by the Chaldeans?
17. If you go out to the princes of the king of Babylon, your life shall be spared, and this city shall not be burned with fire: and you shall be saved, you and your house. From this, theologians teach that God knows free future events, even those that are merely conditional and will never happen, because the hypothesis or condition is not fulfilled and does not occur. For here God predicts that the king, with his house and the city, would be safe, if he surrendered to the Chaldeans; which things nevertheless never happened, because the king refused to fulfill the condition, that is, he refused to follow the counsel of Jeremiah, and did not surrender to the Chaldeans. The same is clear from verse 19, where the king says: 'I am concerned about the Jews who have deserted to the Chaldeans: lest I be delivered into their hands, and they mock me.' To which Jeremiah, from God, responds: 'They will not deliver you.' Therefore God knew this proposition: If Zedekiah surrenders to the Chaldeans, the Chaldeans will not deliver him to the Jewish deserters, nor will they mock him: which things nevertheless never happened, because Zedekiah refused to surrender.
Consider three similar examples. First, Matthew 11:21: 'Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles that were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.' Behold here the free conditional event, namely the conversion of the Tyrians and Sidonians, if they had seen the miracles of Christ, is certainly predicted by Christ; which however was never going to happen, the hypothesis being removed; for the Tyrians did not see and hear Christ and His miracles.
Second, Matthew 26: Christ predicts to Peter the triple denial; which prediction supposed certain knowledge of a conditional future, namely this: If I, Christ, reveal to Peter that he will deny Me three times, this revelation will not prevent the event, namely Peter's denial; which conditional however was entirely free, and very easy to fulfill otherwise; for he could easily have been shaken from it, and withdrawn himself from the danger of denial. Therefore this foreknowledge, namely that the revelation would not prevent Peter's denial, had to precede the will to reveal it in Christ; otherwise Christ would have exposed Himself to the danger of erring and predicting falsely; which is absurd.
Third, 1 Samuel chapter 23: David, a fugitive in Keilah, and about to be trapped there by Saul, asks God two things through the priest. First, whether, if he remains in the city of Keilah, Saul will come to besiege the city. God answers that Saul will come. Second, whether the citizens of Keilah will deliver him and his companions into the hands of Saul. God answers: They will deliver them. Therefore God foreknew both, not in the actual effect, which was never going to happen; but in the cause, namely in the will and inclination of both Saul and the Keilahites given such and such circumstances; namely that such an opportunity and hope of capturing David in such a place, time, and other circumstances would certainly move Saul to besiege Keilah; and that fear of Saul would terrify and move the Keilahites to deliver David to him. Neither of which however happened; for David, having received this oracle, fled from the city.
The reason is that God by His infinite wisdom and knowledge penetrates and comprehends all the affections, recesses, intentions, inclinations of every will, as well as the objects and reasons with all their circumstances,
and knows by what objects or reasons in this or that total state of affairs, or circumstance, the will is to be moved to act, so that it may consent and act, and by which not. For the will cannot be moved unless some reason of good moves it, and it is like a balance, in which now this scale rises, now that, as some weight is added to one or the other, and as much weight as is added to one, by so much that one is depressed, and the other raised. The weight of the will is the beloved object; for, as St. Augustine says: 'My love is my weight, by it I am carried wherever I am carried.' Therefore God knows how great an object, and how great a love for it, is required for the will, placed in this or that circumstance of all things, to incline itself toward it or not. For He sees the proportionality of the will's inclination with the beloved object; whence He sees, for example, that with so many degrees of love and of the beloved object, the will will not be moved; but if one degree is added, it will be moved; if two, more; if three, still more, etc. The same applies to hatred and fear. For love of an object is hatred, fear and flight from its contrary; for as much as anyone, for example, loves his life and his goods, so much does he hate and fear their loss. So Gabriel Vasquez, part 1, disputation 67, chapter 11, number 14, and part 1-2, question 77, article 2.
St. Augustine indicates this, book 11 of the Confessions, chapter 18, where he teaches that nothing can be known except what is present, and therefore future things are known because they are present, not in themselves, but in their causes and signs. 'When therefore, he says, future things are said to be seen, it is not the things themselves which do not yet exist, that is, future things, but perhaps their causes or signs are seen, which already exist: therefore they are not future, but present to those who now see them, from which future things are predicted, conceived in the mind.' And in the book On Rebuke and Grace, chapter 13, he teaches that God by His most omnipotent will can in many ways infallibly, yet freely, draw our will to willing what He Himself wills, and therefore God has the wills of men more in His power than they have their own; because He does with them what He wills.
From what has been said it follows that contingent future events, even conditional ones, are of determinate truth, and have their own being, but a conditioned one. For truth is a property of being, and therefore it is not true now that something is future unless it is determinate, and has some being, namely in antecedent causes and conditions. For that which does not of itself have objective entity and truth, pre-existing in a logical instant before it is represented through knowledge, cannot fall under any knowledge whatsoever, even infinite knowledge (such as God's); because knowledge in the character of an image requires its object to have some being as something to be known, as Aristotle teaches, book 1 of On Interpretation, the last chapter.
Verse 19
19. Lest I be delivered into their hands, namely, lest the Chaldeans deliver me to the Jewish deserters, who would mock me and reproach me, for having, by not surrendering to the Chaldeans according to the oracle of Jeremiah, lost the city, temple and state which they wished to be saved, and therefore they had advised me to surrender; but when I refused, they secretly deserted to the Chaldeans. Therefore Zedekiah feared these Jews more than the Chaldeans, a king too timid and of small courage. But Jeremiah aptly responds to him that, unless he follows his own counsel and God's, he will be mocked by his own women, namely those who had been from the harem of Jeconiah.
Verse 22
22. They will say, they will mock and deride you, saying:
Your peaceful friends have seduced you, and have prevailed against you, that is, your close associates and familiars, whether princes, or counselors, or false prophets, who promised you, O Zedekiah, peace, that is, all prosperity, and who persuaded you not to believe the words of Jeremiah, nor to surrender yourself to the Chaldeans; these have seduced you: for behold you have now been delivered to your enemies. For if you had surrendered yourself to them, as Jeconiah surrendered, from whose court and harem we came, you would be safe and happy like Jeconiah.
They have plunged you into the mire. The Chaldee, into confusion, namely of calamity and captivity, that is: You tried to flee, but you were captured by the Chaldeans, and as if you had fallen into the most tenacious mud, you have crashed into the most extreme miseries, because you believed the flatterers, who said everything would be safe and prosperous, and that the Chaldeans could not capture Jerusalem, so well fortified and protected by God's defense. It is a metaphor from blind men, who are led by wicked guides, leaving the good road, into a slippery and muddy one, and there are deceitfully pushed down into the mire by the same guides, and abandoned by them, cannot emerge. So Delrio, adage 866.
Aristides admirably says, volume 2, oration 1 On Peace: 'Then, he says, risk must be undertaken, however uncertain the outcome, when inaction clearly does harm,' otherwise rest is to be preferred to danger, and peace to war.
See here the misery of princes, who so depend on their courtiers and counselors that they seem to be governed by them, and strive to please them in all things, and do not dare to resist their impious counsels: for so the timid Zedekiah acted, and therefore he perished.
Note also here the fruit of flatterers and wicked counselors. So do those who drag us into luxury and the mire of pleasures, Isaiah chapter 5, verse 20, and chapter 30, verse 10.
And they have withdrawn from you, namely your peaceful friends have abandoned you in affliction, fleeing here and there. Otherwise Vatablus: your feet, he says, have been turned backward.
Verse 24
24. Let no one know these words, and you shall not die, that is: Do not reveal to anyone that I have spoken with you about the siege and capture of the city, lest it leak out to the common people; for the king feared, partly his princes, lest they, thinking he was acting with Jeremiah about surrender without their knowledge and against their will, be offended; partly the common people, lest they throw down their courage and their weapons; for the king and the princes had resolved, not to surrender, but to resist the Chaldeans.
See here where stubbornness leads people, and stubborn love of honor, rank and wealth, how it blinds the mind, so that one rushes to one's own destruction. How true in Zedekiah and the Jews is that saying of Pythagoras:
Know mortals, willingly rushing to their own ruin: An unhappy and foolish race, which does not grasp present advantage Neither with eyes nor ear, and rarely applies the remedy. So fortune agitates the minds of the wretched, and on various wheels Rotates them here and there, and tosses them amid immense dangers.
Again learn here that when God sends a public or private scourge, you should humbly submit to it, acknowledge your fault, and offer your back and shoulders to God who is scourging: and this is the only way to escape the scourge of God, and there is no other. Jeconiah the king submitted to Nebuchadnezzar at God's command, and was exalted; Zedekiah resisted, and was blinded.
So David did, Psalm 38:10: 'I was dumb, and opened not my mouth, because it was You who did it.' And Eli, 1 Samuel 3:18: 'It is the Lord: let Him do what is good in His eyes.' So St. Lupus, Bishop of Troyes, went out with the clergy in procession to meet the approaching Attila, and said: 'Who are you, who disturb and destroy the land?' To whom Attila replied: 'I am the scourge of God.' Immediately Lupus ordered the city gates to be opened, and said: 'Welcome be the scourge of my God.' Therefore Attila, entering the city with his troops, as though his mind had been changed by God, passed out through another gate without harm. Indeed, although Attila was the scourge of God, yet God willed that he should cease to be a scourge to those who received it with such great submission.
Verse 27
27. He spoke to them according to all the words. Therefore it appears that Jeremiah had asked the king not to send him to the prison of Jonathan [though this is not mentioned here] as he had asked in the preceding chapter, verse 19; for he did not lie to the princes.
For nothing had been overheard, namely about the conversation and proceedings with the king, concerning the disaster of the city.
28. And it came to pass that Jerusalem was taken. This is as it were the beginning and the argument of the following chapter; whence the Septuagint, Rabanus, Hugo and St. Thomas refer these words to the following chapter.