The Pit And the Promise (Parts 5 and 6)

[Timl1980]

Part V — The breach and the flight

 

Research Note: When the wall was breached, Babylon’s princes sat at the Middle Gate. Zedekiah fled by night through the king’s garden, slipping toward the Arabah. (Jeremiah 39:1–4)

 

Question for meditation: What happens to a city...and to a soul...when obedience is delayed past the point of mercy?

 

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Siege teaches a city how to count...bread by crumbs, hope by half‑measures, hours by rumors. Then the counting stops. Stone speaks.

 

It began north: a low shudder against old masonry, a sound that got into bones. In the court of the guard, men looked up from nothing and saw everything...the day when walls do what words warned. The first ram struck. The second answered. Dust lifted like a tired prayer.

 

Messengers came thin‑voiced from the Middle Gate: Babylon’s princes had sat down to stay. Names were folded into the report like weights. The middle of the city had become the beginning of its ending.

 

Ebed‑Melech found Jeremiah already standing, his hands open, the last of yesterday’s bread gone. “It’s begun,” the eunuch said, not as alarm but as truth finally audible.

 

Jeremiah nodded once. “Jehovah’s word does not change at a gate,” he said. “It keeps saying the same thing until we hear it.”

 

Inside, Zedekiah walked from archway to archway like a man trying new rooms for old courage. The oath he had spoken sat on his tongue, flavorless. The counsel he had heard bent his shoulders. Fear did the choosing. He called for men, not to stand, but to leave.

 

Night came heavy, carrying the kind of quiet that cities use to make bad decisions quickly. The king moved through shadows that used to dress authority. He passed the colonnade where princes had practiced delay and reached the garden gate...old stone, old iron, old habit. It opened for a man who had waited too long.

 

He did not announce his choice. Choices announced themselves. He went out by the way between the walls, toward the Arabah, a king reduced to a figure in a line of silhouettes, each step saying more than speeches had.

 

Back in the court of the guard, Ebed‑Melech sat beside Jeremiah on warm stone that would cool before dawn. “He’s gone,” the eunuch breathed, eyes on the slice of sky that held no omen, just smoke.

 

Jeremiah did not chase words. He rested them where they belonged. “Jehovah is still here,” he said simply.

 

The city leaned into silence. And somewhere beyond the garden, the sound of feet quickened.

 

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Part VI — The capture and the blind king

 

Research Note: Zedekiah was overtaken on the plains of Jericho, brought to Riblah before Nebuchadnezzar. His sons were slain before him, his eyes put out, and he was bound in chains for Babylon. Jerusalem was burned; Jeremiah was released by Nebuzaradan and entrusted to Gedaliah. (Jeremiah 39:5–14)

 

Question for meditation: What does delayed obedience cost...and how does Jehovah still preserve His word and His servants when kings fail?

 

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Night broke into running. The king moved like a rumor through the garden, out between walls, down toward the Arabah. Fear makes men fast; truth makes armies patient.

 

On the plains of Jericho...flat ground that tells no lies...the chase ended. Hooves circled, dust rose, and Zedekiah’s steps turned into a stillness that had more weight than his throne ever did. He was gathered up not like a king, but like a man who had run past mercy’s last sign.

 

They took him to Riblah, where decisions sit in chairs. Nebuchadnezzar’s court did not shout; it did not need to. The report of a city that would not listen had travelled farther than its bread lines. Zedekiah stood where he had avoided standing for months...before a man who would not tremble.

 

Judgment does not use extra words. Sons were brought out first. Names that should have become histories ended in a single room. The king watched the cost of delay count itself in faces. Then his sight was taken, the last image sealed behind darkness: losses he could no longer undo.

 

Chains do their work without comment. He was bound for Babylon, a figure led away, the sound of iron saying what speeches had not.

 

Back in Jerusalem, fire found the places that had believed themselves permanent. The palace learned heat; the houses learned ash; the gates groaned beyond repair. The markets stopped pretending. The city felt the line between prophecy and memory blur...what had been warned became what was.

 

And yet, in the court of the guard, a different kind of order was spoken. Nebuzaradan, captain of the guard, came with instructions that did not come from princes who had plotted against Jeremiah. He found the prophet where delay had left him...within walls that had held more honesty than palaces.

 

“Take him,” he told his men, “from the court of the guard. Do him no harm. Set him with Gedaliah son of Ahikam.” Mercy was not loud, but it was precise.

 

They led Jeremiah through the courtyard he had learned by sounds...the jar on stone, the sandal scuff, the fly fussing at a seam of mud...and out toward the place where survivors would have to learn steadiness one small obedience at a time.

 

The city burned behind him. The word did not.

 

And somewhere in the smoke, a name waited to be spoken.

 

(The king has fled, the city has burned, and judgment has fallen. Yet even in the smoke, Jehovah remembers names. Tomorrow, we’ll hear the word spoken to a single servant, and watch the remnant face their own choice.)