41:4-5 Two days after Gedaliah's murder, before the news of it had spread, 80 religious pilgrims came down from the old towns of Shechem, Shiloh, and Samaria in northern Israel on their way to Jerusalem. Their dress and other signs of mourning (cf. 16:6; 48:37) demonstrated grief over the effects of the Babylonian invasion (cf. Ps. 74; 79; Isa. 63:7-64:12). They may also have been fulfilling a vow. However cutting their flesh was a pagan practiced that the Mosaic Law condemned (Lev. 19:28; 21:5; Deut. 14:1; cf. Jer. 16:6). They came with grain and incense to offer to Yahweh in worship. It was probably impossible to make animal sacrifices at the temple site at this time. Evidently there was some continuation of worship in the ruined capital after the temple fell.
"Even the ruins were held to be sacred, just as the Western [Wailing] Wall of the temple in Jerusalem is sacred to this day. Also, a token shrine might have been built."511
Since it was the seventh month (September-October, v. 1), the pilgrims probably came to celebrate one or more of the fall festivals.512There were some people left in the territory of the old Northern Kingdom who still accepted and remained faithful to Josiah's reforms of 622 B.C. (cf. Deut. 12:5-6; 2 Kings 23:15-20; 2 Chron. 34:9, 33). These pilgrims apparently made a stop in Mizpah to pay their respects to Gedaliah.513
41:6 Ishmael went out from Mizpah to meet these men weeping as he went, pretending to share their grief. He invited them to come and see Gedaliah, who was now dead, as a way of trapping them.
41:7 When they entered Mizpah, Ishmael and his henchmen turned on them, murdered them, and threw their corpses in a cistern. By not explaining his reason for doing so, the text paints Ishmael as a brutal murderer who was bent on carrying out a vendetta against all who had willing contact with Babylon and its representatives.
41:8 Ten of the men from the north convinced Ishmael to let them live by claiming that they had a hidden cache of food stored in a field. The Israelites frequently used dry wells and cisterns as underground silos.514Apparently Ishmael needed these supplies and so allowed these 10 men to live, at least until he had confiscated their food.
41:9 The cistern that Ishmael filled with dead bodies was one that King Asa of Judah had made on account of King Baasha of Israel (cf. 1 Kings 15:22; 2 Chron. 16:6). Good King Asa had made the cistern to preserve life, but wicked Ishmael now polluted it by filling it with corpses. To give these pilgrims such a burial showed disrespect for them.
41:10 Then Ishmael took captive all the people of Mizpah that Nebuzaradan had placed under Gedaliah's charge including King Zedekiah's daughters (or perhaps women with royal blood).515He began to transport all these people to the nation of Ammon, his ally to the east of the Jordan River.
41:11 However, Johanan, who had warned Gedaliah to look out for Ishmael (40:13-16), and some remaining guerrilla commanders heard what Ishmael had done.
41:12 Johanan, the commanders, and their men pursued Ishmael intending to kill him. They caught up with him by the large pool in Gibeon about three miles southwest of Mizpah (cf. 2 Sam. 2:12-16). Since Gibeon was to the southwest of Mizpah it seems that Ishmael was taking a roundabout way to Ammon. Perhaps he went there to take more captives or to confuse his pursuers.
41:13-15 When the captives that Ishmael had taken saw Johanan and his men, they were glad. They forsook Ishmael and joined Johanan. Ishmael, however, escaped to Ammon with eight accomplices.
41:16-18 Johanan led the people he had rescued south to Geruth-Chimham (lit. the lodging place of Chimham) near Bethlehem, six miles south of Jerusalem. The location of this place is presently unknown, but it may have been a site that David gave to Chimham in appreciation for Barzillai (cf. 2 Sam. 19:37-40). Johanan and his party intended to proceed to Egypt because they feared that the Babylonian soldiers would kill them when they heard that Ishmael had assassinated Gedaliah.
