Bad Friend, Good Friend

In chapter 38 of Jeremiah’s prophecies, we meet two men and their friends. The first is King Zedekiah and his friend Pashur son of Malchiah, a royal official and advisor. Pashur was the kind of friend who would bend over backward for someone else if it benefited him. Pashur’s advice was given in self-interest, but the king was fool enough not to care or know the difference. 

Jeremiah the prophet was certainly not among the king’s friends. That is because Jeremiah was a man of integrity; willing to tell the truth at any cost. The Babylonians were coming, Jerusalem was going to fall, and the only way of escape was to surrender. It was an unpopular message, but Jeremiah understood that it as God’s word and he wasn’t going to be intimidated by the king and his foolish friends. 

But Pashur had power and popularity on his side and together with his friends he convinced King Zedekiah to throw Jeremiah in a mud-bottomed cistern. With the king’s approval, Pashur grabbed a few ropes and lowered the pathetic prophet into the pit, feet sinking into the muck and prophecies silenced by the cistern walls. 

Jeremiah didn’t have a lot of friends, but the ones he did have were of opposite character of the king’s friends. When Ebed-melech heard the news that Jeremiah had unjustly been tossed in a pit, he swiftly took action to rescue his friend. After gaining the approval of the wishy-washy king, Ebed-melech went with his own friends to the storehouse, found old rags and worn-out clothes, and used them as ropes to lift Jeremiah out of his muddy prison. 

King Zedekiah enjoyed the good life of power and influence. He had friends like Pashur who told fancy tales and promised a bright future. Meanwhile, Jeremiah endured scorn and ridicule in return for his faithful preaching, and most people wanted to distance themselves from the prophet. 

But Jeremiah had friends like Ebed-melech, a friend with a backbone; a friend with integrity. And in the end, Jeremiah had the last laugh. God gave him a word against the king; a prophecy dripping with irony: 

Your trusted friends have deceived you and prevailed against you; now that your feet are sunk in the mud, they turn away from you.

Jeremiah 38:22

Do you see? The royal king had bad friends that led him down into a muddy pit of judgment. The bedraggled prophet had a good friend that pulled him out of a muddy pit. 

More often than not we prefer being like King Zedekiah. We do the popular thing. We take the easy out. We listen to what sounds good at first listen. We trust in Pashur. But if we do that we will end up stuck in mud and alone, or worse. 

Jeremiah shows us the way of faithfulness and integrity. He teaches us about the kind of friends who are often few and far between; friends who stick up for truth and for their neighbour. A friend like Ebed-melech. A friend like Jesus.