So the officials took Jeremiah and put him in the cistern of Malkijah, one of the royal princes, that was in the courtyard of the guardhouse. There was no water in the cistern, only mud. So when they lowered Jeremiah into the cistern with ropes he sank in the mud.

"For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, [the] source of living water, to hew out for themselves cisterns, cracked cisterns that can hold no water.

And their nobles send their little ones to the waters: they come to the cisterns, and find no water; they return with their vessels empty; they are put to shame and confounded, and cover their heads.

Now when Ebed-melech the Ethiopian, one of the eunuchs who was in the king's house, heard that they had put Jeremiah in the cistern; the king then sitting in the gate of Benjamin;

My lord the king, these men have done evil in all that they have done to Jeremiah the prophet, whom they have cast into the cistern; and he is likely to die from hunger in the place where he is: for there is no more bread in the city.

Then the king commanded Ebed-melech the Ethiopian, saying, Take from here thirty men with you, and take up Jeremiah the prophet out of the cistern, before he dies.

So Ebed-melech took the men with him, and went into the house of the king under the treasury, and took there old clothes and old rags, and let them down by ropes into the cistern to Jeremiah.

So they drew up Jeremiah with cords, and took him up out of the cistern: and Jeremiah remained in the court of the prison.

But when they came into the city, Ishmael son of Nethaniah and the men with him slaughtered them and threw them into a cistern.

Now the cistern where Ishmael had thrown all the corpses of the men he had struck down was a large one that King Asa had made in the encounter with Baasha king of Israel. Ishmael son of Nethaniah filled it with the slain.