37:11-12 During the lifting of the siege of Jerusalem just described (v. 5), Jeremiah left the city to conduct some personal business concerning the purchase of some property in the territory of Benjamin. This may have been the land in Anathoth that his cousin Hanamel later wanted him to buy (cf. 32:6-15).
Since Jeremiah was imprisoned in the court of the guard when Hanamel approached him about buying this property, Jeremiah may have left the city to view the land anticipating that his cousin would make the offer. The present incident closes with Jeremiah confined in the court of the guard (v. 21). This suggests that the present incident occurred before Hanamel's offer, which he made when Jeremiah was confined there. Or these may be two unrelated incidents.
37:13 Jeremiah was leaving Jerusalem by the northern gate that led to the territory of Benjamin when Irijah, a captain of the guard, arrested him.485He charged the prophet with defecting to the enemy. Jeremiah had urged others to submit to the Babylonians (21:9; 38:2), and some of the people had taken his advice (38:2, 19; 39:9; 52:15), so the charge was plausible.
37:14 Jeremiah denied the charge but to no avail. Irijah took him prisoner and brought him before the city officials.
37:15-16 The officials angrily beat Jeremiah and confined him in the house of a scribe named Jonathan, which they had converted into a jail.486Jeremiah remained in an underground dungeon for many days. The Hebrew words describing this cell are difficult to interpret. They may describe "a complex of large, underground cisterns that had been converted into a prison."487Jeremiah feared for his life there (v. 20). The attitude of Zedekiah's officials contrasts sharply with that of Jehoiakim's officials in the previous chapter (36:11-19).
37:17 Zedekiah secretly sent for Jeremiah and brought him into the palace. The king feared his nobles who were "hawks"militarily and hostile to Jeremiah. Zedekiah asked the prophet if the Lord had given him any message in response to his previous praying (v. 3). Jeremiah replied that he did have a message from the Lord and it was that the king would become a prisoner of Nebuchadnezzar. The king was really the one bound in this situation, and the prisoner was the truly free man.488
37:18-19 Jeremiah then asked Zedekiah what he had done to deserve imprisonment. His prophecies had proved true whereas the messages of the prophets who predicted that Nebuchadnezzar would not invade the land had proved false. These false prophets were evidently free, but Jeremiah was in prison.
37:20 Jeremiah begged the king not to send him back to prison because he would die there.
37:21 Zedekiah conceded and sent him to a better place of confinement, the court of the guard (cf. 32:2; Neh. 3:25).489He also ordered that the prophet receive bread regularly as long as there was bread in the city (cf. Rom. 8:28).490Had Zedekiah not feared his nobles this vacillating king might have given Jeremiah his freedom.
"In many ways, Zedekiah is a tragic figure. It seems that he is attracted to Jeremiah and his message like iron filings to a magnet, yet he is never able to summon enough resolve to act in response to that message. While such conclusions are speculative, it is possible that Zedekiah presents a paradigm of persons whose rejection of the purposes of God through their weakness of character is every bit as damaging and damning as the aggressive rebellion of Jehoiakim."491
