Lives of Scripture

Gedaliah son of Pashhur was one of four officials in Jerusalem's royal court during the final, desperate years of King Zedekiah's reign, as the Babylonian army besieged the city (Jeremiah 38:1). Along with Shephatiah, Jucal, and another Pashhur, Gedaliah heard Jeremiah continuing to prophesy that the city would fall and that those who surrendered to the Babylonians, rather than resisting, would survive: "He who stays in this city will die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence, but he who goes out to the Chaldeans will live" (38:2). Convinced this message was undermining the defenders' morale and endangering the city, the four officials appealed to King Zedekiah: "Now let this man be put to death, inasmuch as he is discouraging the men of war... this man is not seeking the well-being of this people but rather their harm" (38:4). Zedekiah, unwilling to oppose them, handed Jeremiah over, and the officials lowered him by ropes into a royal cistern with no water but deep mud, where he began to sink (38:5-6). Jeremiah would have died there had a Cushite court official, Ebed-melech, not intervened and persuaded the king to allow Jeremiah's rescue (38:7-13). Gedaliah's role in this episode places him among the officials willing to silence God's true word by force when it threatened their preferred political course, a choice history soon proved catastrophically wrong when Jerusalem fell exactly as Jeremiah had warned.