Gedaliah son of Pashhur, Jehukal a son of Shelemiah, and Pashhur son of Malkijah heard what Jeremiah was telling all the people when he said, “…This city will certainly be given into the hands of the army of the king of Babylon, who will capture it.” Then the officials said to the king, “This man should be put to death…” So they took Jeremiah and put him into the cistern of Malkijah … it had no water in it, only mud, and Jeremiah sank down into the mud. (Jeremiah 38:1–6)
The names of Jeremiah’s enemies who refused to accept God’s warning through the prophet are hardly familiar biblical names, but this makes it all the more remarkable that evidence of two of these otherwise unknown men, mentioned in the same biblical verse, was found in archaeological excavations in Israel.
In 2008, during work conducted just south of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, excavators discovered a seal impression inscribed with the name Gedaliah son of Pashur. The late Dr. Eilat Mazar, who headed the excavation, noted that the newly-discovered seal was found just yards from the spot where, three years earlier, another seal had been found with the name of another of Jeremiah’s enemies – Jehukal son of Shelemiah.
Both Gedaliah and Jehukal were high-ranking officials of King Zedekiah, the last ruler of the Kingdom of Judah before Jerusalem and its temple were destroyed by the Babylonians in 587 B.C. Jehukal was the man that King Zedekiah sent to the prophet Jeremiah with the message: “Please pray to the Lord our God for us” (Jeremiah 37:3) – which doubtless secretly angered Jehukal as we then read that this individual was one of Jeremiah’s enemies intent on killing him (Jeremiah 38:1–6).
The seals were both found in a controlled archaeological excavation only a few meters from each other and both were securely dated to the time of Jeremiah. The names are unusual enough that in the specific combination of the two names together – and both said to be sons of the same fathers – they are undoubtedly the same individuals mentioned in the biblical account who opposed Jeremiah and who brought about his imprisonment. As such, the seal impressions rank among some of the best documented evidence of biblical characters and are immensely important. As Dr. Mazar herself wrote:
“The exceptionality of the discovery is fully appreciated only when holding the two bullae in hand: two small seal impressions inscribed on clay objects only 1 cm across, now laying before our eyes unblemished after having been buried in rubble of the Babylonian destruction for precisely 2,595 years, the names they bear still clearly legible. Only on precious, rare occasions do archaeologists experience discoveries such as this one, where figures from the annals of history materialize themselves so tangibly” (Eilat Mazar, Biblical Archaeology Review, 2012).
Thanks to Dr. Mazar’s patient and careful work, Gedaliah and Jehukal – named specifically in the biblical account as two of Jeremiah’s leading enemies – are now substantiated as real people who participated in events of the time just as the book of Jeremiah tells us.
As for the prophet Jeremiah himself, he was probably lowered into a cistern full of mud so that the clinging mud, like quicksand, might compress his chest and lungs and suffocate him without his blood being directly on the hands of those who wanted him silenced. But Jeremiah’s life did not end there. Fortunately, one of the few God-fearing officials in Zedekiah’s court, the Ethiopian Ebedmelech, learned of Jeremiah’s plight and went to the king to plead on Jeremiah’s behalf. With Zedekiah’s approval, Ebedmelech organized a rescue operation to extricate the prophet from the cistern and certain death. Jeremiah was then returned to a prison in the palace, where he continued to preach God’s warning message in the final months before Jerusalem’s destruction (Jeremiah 38:7–27). In this, as in many other cases, the Bible tells us far more than archaeological artifacts possibly can, but the artifacts help substantiate the biblical account in a way nothing else might.
