Jeremiah 38 lists, by name and father's name, the court officials who had the prophet thrown into a muddy cistern for preaching surrender. In the ruins of the district where Judah's government worked, excavators found the discarded document seals of two of them — Yehukhal son of Shelemiah and Gedaliah son of Pashhur — matching the verse detail for detail. These were minor men, remembered nowhere else in ancient literature; only the book of Jeremiah and the clay agree they existed.
- What it is
- Two clay seal impressions naming Yehukhal son of Shelemiah and Gedaliah son of Pashhur
- Date of artifact
- early 6th century BC
- Discovered
- City of David excavations, Jerusalem, a few metres apart, 2005 (Eilat Mazar's team (the second in 2008))
- Where it is now
- City of David / Israel Antiquities Authority, Jerusalem
- Related to
- Two royal officials who demanded the prophet Jeremiah's death
- Scripture
- Jeremiah 38:1–6
What this find showsTwo named minor characters from a single verse of Jeremiah were real Jerusalem officials of exactly the right decades — strong evidence that the book preserves precise court records of its time.
What it does not proveThe seals confirm the men, not the episode; the cistern, the rescue, and Jeremiah's oracles are attested only by the text.
Sources & further reading