38 Four officials, Mattan’s son Shefatyah, Pashhur’s son Gedalyah, Shelemyah’s son Yehukal, and Malkiyah’s son Pashhur heard the messages that Yirmeyah was telling all the people, saying: 2 Yahweh says this: Anyone who stays in this city will be killed by fighting, famine, or deadly diseases, but anyone who goes out to the Babylonians will survive—they won’t be killed. 3 Yahweh says that this city will definitely be taken over and captured by the Babylonian king.

4 So those officials went to King Tsidkiyah and requested that Yirmeyah be executed because (they claimed) his messages were discouraging their warriors defending the city and discouraging all the people. They claimed that he wasn’t advancing the people’s safety, but causing harm.

5 “All right,” King Tsidkiyah replied. “Do whatever you want with him, because no king can argue against all of you.” 6 So they took Yirmeyah and put him into the water storage cistern carved out by the king’s son Malkiyah. It was right there in the guards’ courtyard, and they lowered Yirmeyah down with ropes. There wasn’t any water left in the cistern, but it was still muddy at the bottom and he sank down into the mud.

7 Now the Kushite Eved-Melek was one of the trusted servants in the king’s house and he heard that they had put Yirmeyah down into the cistern. Meanwhile, the king was sitting at the Benyamin Gate. 8 So Eved-Melek left the palace and went and spoke with the king, 9 “My master the king, those men have been evil in the way they’ve mistreated the prophet Yirmeyah. They threw him into a cistern so he’d die in it from hunger, since there’s no food left in the city.” 10 Then the king ordered Eved-Melek to take command of thirty of the king’s men to go and get the prophet Yirmeyah out of the cistern so he wouldn’t die down there. 11 So Eved-Melek led the men to a storeroom for clothing under the king’s house where they got some rags and worn-out clothes. Then they let them down by ropes to Yirmeyah in the cistern 12 and told him to use the rags and old clothes under his armpits to protect him from being hurt by the ropes. Yirmeyah did that, 13 then they pulled him up with the ropes—that’s how they got him up out from the mud in the cistern. Then he stayed in the guards’ courtyard.