Readings:
Jeremiah 38-39
Hebrews 7

One of the nobility has heard Jeremiah and instead of heeding the warnings, he takes enough offense at them to ask the king to have him killed. The king seems to have lost hope at this point because he just hands him over, but gives the impression that he doesn’t really care either way. So the take Jeremiah and lower him down into a cistern that didn’t have any water, but just a layer of mud at the bottom. This is probably one of the most well known scenes from his life, where he’s abandoned to his fate of slowly starving to death in a muddy hole.

But an Ethiopian eunuch hears what happened and approaches the king for permission to remove the prophet from the hole where he’s being held. And he goes and lifts Jeremiah out of the hole. The text doesn’t tell us, but even though it appears to be immediately after he’s out in the hole he gets rescued, I don’t think we can make that assumption. He could’ve been in the hole for days or longer. You can live without food for a long time, but water is an immediate need. Since he was in a muddy hole in the ground that was build to store water, there may have been some puddles for him to drink, so it’s possible that he was in the ground for weeks even.

The king comes to Jeremiah and asks him to inquire about his fate to God for him and promises amnesty for him in return. Jeremiah tells him to surrender to the Babylonians and he’ll live, and the city will be saved. If he refuses to surrender then the city will be destroyed and he’ll be taken captive anyway but under much harsher conditions.

As always, Zedekiah is interested in what God has to say, but completely unwilling to listen and do what he’s told to do. Reminds me of myself from time to time, and my reliance on the grace of confession to get through this life.

The following chapter recounts the fall of Jerusalem into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar. He captures the court of the king as they tried to flee and puts all of Zedekiah’s sons to death, then gouges out his eyes and leads him bound in chains to Babylon.

Hebrews 7

This chapter examines the highpriesthood of Jesus on two levels; it’s compared with the royal priesthood of Melchizedek, and contrasted with the hereditary priesthood of Aaron.

Everything that the priesthood of the Old Covenant prefigured finds its fulfillment in Christ Jesus, the “one mediator between God and men.” The Christian tradition considers Melchizedek, “priest of God Most High,” as a prefiguration of the priesthood of Christ, the unique “high priest after the order of Melchizedek”; “holy, blameless, unstained,” “by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified,” that is, by the unique sacrifice of the cross.

CCC 1544

Melchizedek appeared only one other place in the Bible, and that was in a brief encounter with Abraham in Genesis. During this interaction, Abraham offers a tenth of his spoils from a battle, and together they offer bread and wine as a sacrifice to God. This is a prefigurement of Jesus and the last supper.

(For a longer treatment on Melchizedek see this link https://nowthatimcatholic.com/2016/07/26/the-story-of-salvation-abraham/)

After showing similarities with Melchizedek, and how his life foreshadowed Christ’s coming, the author switches to the Levitical priesthood. He points out that God promised a restoration of the Melchizedek priesthood in psalms 110, and if the Levitical priesthood was sufficient then there’d be no need to restore another order of priests, but it wasn’t sufficient. So with a change of priesthood comes a change of law, and this is where we fulfilled the old covenant and move into the new.

The blood of animals could never permanently cleanse the people of their sins, but the blood of Christ could. Jesus offered that sacrifice once, unlike the Levitical priests who had to offer daily sacrifices because they too were sinners.

Tomorrow’s Readings:
Jeremiah 40-41
Hebrews 8