September 30: 2020 – Day 39 – Jeremiah 39

Jerusalem is captured.  It seems like they did put up a fight and did not surrender as Jeremiah had suggested that they did.  Look at how we know that.  Vs.1 tells us that in the 9th year of Zedekiah Babylon besieged Jerusalem.  In vs.11 we read that there was a breach in Jerusalem which allowed the troops to flood in and conquer the city.  It took two years.  King Zedekiah fled on foot to escape what might happen to him.  But he was captured and all of his children and his high officials were slaughtered in front of him and his eyes were gouged as a sign that the last thing he would see with his eyes was the death of his family.  Yeah, the Babylonians were no joke.  They then bound him and the rest of the people in Jerusalem and made them march to Babylon.  They left behind to care for the land some of the poorest of the region who probably had not even been allowed to stay in the city.

Here you will see a map that allows us to see the distance between Jerusalem and Babylon which was about 900 miles, and we read that when Ezra did the trip in about 5 months in Ezra 7:8 and surrounding verses.  That is a hike, not quite as long as the AT, but probably has a lot more dangerous variables to it than the AT.

There is one person who is saved, and that is the Ethiopian Eunuch,  Ebed-melech, who had saved Jeremiah from the pit.  The king also saved Jeremiah and says that he should be treated well.  Interesting that the foreign king looks to save and treat well Jeremiah who had encouraged Israel to surrender.  Hmmm, something doesn’t seem quite right.  But we do see that if they had surrendered then they and the city would have been saved.