reduced to extreme distress by the
persecutions which his faithfulness, and the incessant urgency of his
warnings and expostulations had brought upon him. It was at a time
when the Chaldean armies had been driven away from Jerusalem for a
short period by the Egyptians, as one vulture drives away another from
its prey. Jeremiah determined to avail himself of the opportunity to
go to the province of Benjamin, to visit his friends and family there.
He was intercepted, however, at one of the gates, on his way, and
accused of a design to make his escape from the city, and go over to
the Chaldeans. The prophet earnestly denied this charge. They paid no
regard to his declarations, but sent him back to Jerusalem, to the
officers of the king's government, who confined him in a house which
they used as a prison.

After he had remained in this place of confinement for several days,
the king sent and took him from it, and brought him to the palace. The
king inquired whether he had any prophecy to utter from the Lord.
Jeremiah replied that the word of the Lord was, that the Chaldeans
should certainly return again, and that Zedekiah himself should fall
into their hands, and be carried captive to Babylon. While he thus
persisted so strenuously in the declarations which he had made so
often before, he demanded of the king that he should not be sent back
again to the house of imprisonment from which he had been rescued. The
king said he would not send him back, and he accordingly directed,
instead, that he should be taken to the court of the public prison,
where his confinement would be less rigorous, and there he was to be
supplied daily with food, so long, as the king expressed it, as there
should be any food remaining in the city.

But Jeremiah's enemies were not at rest. They came again, after a
time, to the king, and represented to him that the prophet, by his
gloomy and terrible predictions, discouraged and depressed the hearts
of the people, and weakened their hands; that he ought, accordingly,
to be regarded as a public enemy; and they begged the king to proceed
decidedly against him. The king replied that he would give him into
their hands, and they might do with him what they pleased.

There was a dungeon in the prison, the only access to which was from
above. Prisoners were let down into it with ropes, and left there to
die of hunger. The bottom of it was wet and miry, and the prophet,
when let down into its gloomy depths