"Indeed, my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and they have dug cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that cannot hold water."

So they threw Jeremiah into a cistern that belonged to the king's son Malchijah and was located in the courtyard of the guard. When they let Jeremiah down with ropes, because there was no water in the cistern only mud Jeremiah sank into the mud.

When they reached the middle of the city, Nethaniah's son Ishmael and the men who were with him slaughtered them and threw them into a cistern.

Ishmael threw the bodies of the men he killed on account of Gedaliah into the cistern that King Asa had made for protection against King Baasha of Israel. That is the same one Nethaniah's son Ishmael filled with those he killed.

Their nobles send their young people for water. They go to the cisterns, but they find no water. They return with their vessels empty. They're disappointed and dismayed, and they cover their heads in shame.

Ebed-melech the Ethiopian, a eunuch in the king's house, heard that Jeremiah had been put in the cistern. The king was sitting in the Benjamin Gate,

"Your majesty, these men have acted wickedly in all they have done to the prophet Jeremiah by throwing him into the cistern. He will die where he is because of the famine since there is no more bread in the city."

Then the king ordered Ebed-melech the Ethiopian: "Thirty men are at your disposal. Take them with you and bring up Jeremiah the prophet from the cistern before he dies."

So Ebed-melech took the men with him and went to the palace, underneath the storeroom. He took worn out rags and worn out clothes from there, and using ropes he lowered them down to Jeremiah in the cistern.

They pulled Jeremiah with the ropes and brought him up from the cistern, but Jeremiah remained in the courtyard of the guard.