“Then Zedekiah said

To Jeremiah.

‘Do not let anyone else

Know of this conversation!

Otherwise you will die!

If the officials should hear

That I have spoken

With you,

They would come to you.

They would say to you.

‘Just Tell us

What you said

To the king!

Do not conceal it from us!

Otherwise we will put you

To death!

What did the king say to you?

Then you shall say to them.

‘I was presenting my plea

To the king

Not to send me back

To the house of Jonathan

To die there.’”

Once again, the wishy-washy King Zedekiah wanted Jeremiah to keep this conversation with him a secret. If Jeremiah told anyone about this exchange of views, he would be killed. The problem was that the king’s officials might come to Jeremiah and force him to talk under the same threat of death. They would want to know all of what they said to each other. The king had a plan for Jeremiah to tell anyone who asked what they talked about.   Jeremiah was to say that he just did not want to go back to the dungeon prison at the house of Jonathan, mentioned early in the preceding chapter during his arrest by the king’s officials. In other words, the whole conversation was about what prison Jeremiah should be in. No one seemed to worry about how Jeremiah got out of the cistern well.