Jeremiah 38:9
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 dungeon; and he is like to die for hunger in the place where he is: for there is no more bread in the city. 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 dungeon; and he is like to die for hunger in the place where he is: for there is no more bread in the city.
Wicked men in authority demanded Jeremiah's death for prophesying calamity, charging that he was an enemy to the nation and had weakened the hands of the people. The king knew the charges were false, but from cowardice and to please high and influential men he gave Jeremiah into their hands. They cast him into the dungeon of Malchiah the son of Hammelech in the court of the prison, letting him down with cords into a dark and dismal pit where there was no water but mire, and he sank in the mire.
He was left there in danger of dying for hunger where he was, because there was no more bread in the city. The verse is the plea of the friends God raised up for Jeremiah, specifically Ebed-melech's appeal to the king to recognize the evil and injustice done to the prophet and to rescue him. By that intercession he was taken out of the dungeon and restored to the court of the prison, for God worked to have him brought up out of the pit and to have his cause find favor with princes.
He was cast into the pit for his faithful integrity, and such sore affliction, distress, and appearances against the righteous do not prove that God has forsaken His servant or that His cause is failing. Even when one suffers because of rightdoing, God does not forget him but delivers in His time and turns the humbling to vindication. The verse means that Christ cannot forsake those who are as the apple of His eye, the purchase of His precious blood. It proves that in the trying hour when God's people endure privation and suffer for want of food, shut in and left to perish while judgments are visited upon the earth and the wicked are dying from hunger and thirst, they are not left to perish. Angels will provide the righteous with food and water, for they are much better than the fowls that God feeds and of more value than many sparrows that the Father numbers and watches.