Jeremiah 38


Jeremiah 38 is the thirty-eighth chapter of the Book of Jeremiah in the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. It is numbered as Jeremiah 45 in the Septuagint. This book contains prophecies attributed to the prophet Jeremiah, and is one of the Books of the Prophets. This chapter is part of a narrative section consisting of chapters 37 to 44. Chapter 38 records the petition from the royal officials to punish Jeremiah, his confinement in the dungeon or cistern and his rescue from there, although he remains in captivity, a secret conversation between Jeremiah and King Zedekiah, and the inquiry of Jeremiah by the king's officials.

Text

The original text was written in Hebrew. This chapter is divided into 28 verses.

Textual witnesses

Some early manuscripts containing the text of this chapter in Hebrew are of the Masoretic Text tradition, which includes the Codex Cairensis, the Petersburg Codex of the Prophets, Aleppo Codex, Codex Leningradensis.
There is also a translation into Koine Greek known as the Septuagint, made in the last few centuries BCE. Extant ancient manuscripts of the Septuagint version include Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Alexandrinus and Codex Marchalianus.

Verse numbering

The order of chapters and verses of the Book of Jeremiah in the English Bibles, Masoretic Text, and Vulgate, in some places differs from that in the Septuagint according to Rahlfs or Brenton. The following table is taken with minor adjustments from Brenton's Septuagint, page 971.
The order of Computer Assisted Tools for Septuagint/Scriptural Study based on Rahlfs' Septuaginta, differs in some details from Joseph Ziegler's critical edition in Göttingen LXX. Swete's Introduction mostly agrees with Rahlfs' edition.
Hebrew, Vulgate, EnglishRahlfs' LXX Brenton's LXX
38:1-2845:1-28
31:1-4038:1-34,36,37,35,38-4038:1-40

Parashot

The parashah sections listed here are based on the Aleppo Codex. Jeremiah 38 is a part of the "Fifteenth prophecy " in the section of Prophecies interwoven with narratives about the prophet's life . : open parashah; : closed parashah.

Structure

The New King James Version divides this chapter into the following sections:
  • = Jeremiah in the Dungeon
  • = Zedekiah's Fears and Jeremiah's Advice

    Verse 1

  • "Jucal the son of Shelemiah": same as "Jehucal the son of Shelemiah" in Jeremiah 37:3. During the excavations in the ruins of the City of David conducted by the Ir David Foundation in 2005 a bulla was discovered with the inscription "belonging to Jehucal son of Shelemiah son of Shovi" which is thought to point to the person mentioned here.
  • "Gedaliah the son of Pashhur": A bulla seal bearing the same name in Paleo-Hebrew alphabet was discovered by Eilat Mazar of Hebrew University, Jerusalem, during an excavation in the ruins of the City of David conducted by the Ir David Foundation in 2008, in the same strata, just a few yards away, from the seal of Jehucal the son of Shelemiah.
  • "Pashhur, the son of Malchiah" is also named in Jeremiah 21:1.

    Verse 2

  • Huey and others note the close similarities of the wording in this verse with Jeremiah 21:9, but concluded that the warning could have been repeated many times.

    Verse 4

  • According to the New Oxford Annotated Bible, the phraseology in this verse is found to be similar to one in "a letter written 18 months earlier, found in the excavations at Lachish".

    Verse 6

This location is referred to as "the dungeon" in the King James Version and New King James Version, the American Standard Version and the Geneva Bible. It is referred to as "a cistern" in the English Standard Version, the revised edition of the New American Bible, the New International Version and the Revised Standard Version. The Jerusalem Bible describes it as a cistern or a well. Alternative readings state that Malchiah was not the king's son but "the son of Hammelech".

Verses 7-13

The story of Jeremiah's rescue from the cistern/dungeon is recalled in these verses. Ebed-melech, an Ethiopian royal servant, appears "inexplicably and with no prior narrative intimations", to become the one who call's for Jeremiah's rescue.

Verse 28

The Jerusalem Bible merges the last part of this verse with Jeremiah 39:3:
''Now when Jerusalem was captured... all the officers of the King of Babylon marched in...''

Jewish

38