The murder of Gedaliah (Jeremiah ch41)

This story describes the death of Gedaliah son of Ahikam at the hands of Ismael son of Nathanael.

Gedaliah son of Ahikam son of Shaphan came from one of the leading families of Judah. He had been appointed by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon as local governor after the conquest, and he had been indirectly appointed by God to retrieve some sense of community for the surviving remnants of the shattered nation, as described in ch40.

Ishmael son of Nathanael son of Elishama was a member of the royal family, which must have been enlarged out of hand by the habits of polygamy. He had been one of the chief officers of the king, and was now leading a small warrior band, no more than a dozen men. We do not know when he made his escape from the Babylonians. As in the case of the other bands, he might have stayed in the countryside or fled into exile when the Babylonians first arrived, or left the city in the brief interval when the Babylonians withdrew to meet the Egyptians. As one of the chief officers, he probably stayed in Jerusalem until the end, evading them in the chaos of the fall of the city. But he got far enough away to make contact with the Ammonites, who commissioned him to carry out the murder.

Ishmael’s mission seems to have been an open secret. Another band-leader, Johanan son of Kareah, tried to warn Gedaliah about the danger. Johanan wanted to kill Ishmael pre-emptively. This would have been a bad idea, because it would have sparked off civil war amongst the bands. Gedaliah forbad it, and Johanan respected his authority enough to accept the veto. Gedaliah disbelieved the charge, or preferred the principle of “innocent until proved guilty”.

In he event, Ishmael visited Gedaliah at Mizpah with ten men, and struck down Gedaliah treacherously in the middle of their meal. He also struck down “all the Jews who were with Gedaliah” (which probably means the armed men) and the few Chaldean soldiers who had been left there (ch41 vv1-3).

On the next day, by chance, eighty pilgrims arrived on the scene. These men came from northern cities, part of the old kingdom of Israel, passing through Mizpah on their way to Jerusalem, and carrying cereal offerings and incense to offer in the ruined temple. Their beards were shaved, their clothes torn, and their bodies gashed, as a sign of deep mourning. Ishmael deceptively invited them into the city, and then killed them all. His motive will have been hostility to the worship of the Lord, showing how much the religious loyalty of the nation had been slipping. He threw their bodies into a cistern. Which was, incidentally, built by Asa king of Judah as part of his defences against Baasha king of Israel (1 Kings cg15 v23). This detail of historical geography evidently comes from Jeremiah’s local knowledge as a Benjaminite.

The captives released by the Babylonians, including the king’s daughters, were still at Mizpah. Ishmael made them his own captives and began to take the whole party towards the Ammonites on the other side of the river.

This is a good moment to speculate on the intentions of Baalis king of the Ammonites, the promoter of this deed. It is not likely that he would have proposed to fight against the Babylonian empire single-handed. I suspect a deeper game; that once Gedaliah was out of the way, apparently killed by the Jews, Baalis might angle to get himself appointed governor in the region. Of course he would have to gloss over his own involvement in the affair, in his indignant report to the king. As for the captives collected by Ishmael, Baalis could sell them as slaves or add them to his Ammonite subjects. He could even send them back with an Ammonite force to establish a subject mini-state on the western side of the Jordan. In the days of Isaiah, two hostile kings had been planning to establish “the son of Tabeel” as a puppet king in Jerusalem (Isaiah ch6 v6), and Baalis may have thought of rewarding Ishmael with a similar role. It is safe to assume, anyway, that Baalis was looking to extend his influence across the western bank, anticipating what Tobiah the Ammonite was able to achieve later. Tobiah had political allies among the nobility of Jerusalem and had even been allocated a great chamber in the house of the Lord (Nehemiah ch6 vv17-19 and ch13 vv4-5).

However, Ishmael did not get very far before he was intercepted by all the other bands, led by Johanan, at the pool of Gibeon. Jeremiah doesn’t mention the previous history of this pool, as the place where Joab and Abner, commanding the forces of David and his rival, met in battle (2 Samuel ch2). This time there was no fight, because Ishmael was obviously outnumbered. His captives joyfully abandoned him, and only eight followers accompanied him in his flight to the Ammonites.

However, the rescuers and the rescued captives did not return to Mizpah. Instead they all went south to encamp near Bethlehem, with the intention of moving on into Egypt. The motive for going into exile was that they feared the reaction of the Babylonian king to these events, even though they had not themselves been responsible for the murders.

This decision only compounded the disaster. If the bands had remained in the land, they could have helped to defend the people from human predators. In their absence, the human predators would be given a free rein (as distinct from “free reign”, which is what kings do). They would sweep across the land and fill the complaining chapters of the prophets, looting and taking slaves. The Ammonites and Moabites would come in from the east. The Edomites would try to take over the whole country from the south. The people of Philistia and the merchants of Tyre would buy the slaves and sell them on across the Mediterranean, helping to create the Dispersion.

All these things would be among the effects of the murder of Gedaliah.

In the traditional Jewish calendar, the death of Gedaliah is marked as a day of fast.