Yeremia 38:6

38:6 So the officials ¹  took Jeremiah and put him in the cistern ²  of Malkijah, one of the royal princes, ³  that was in the courtyard of the guardhouse. There was no water in the cistern, only mud. So when they lowered Jeremiah into the cistern with ropes he sank in the mud. ⁴ 

Yeremia 41:7

41:7 But as soon as they were inside the city, Ishmael son of Nethaniah and the men who were with him slaughtered them and threw their bodies ⁵  in a cistern.

[38:6]  ¹ tn Heb “they.”

[38:6]  ² sn A cistern was a pear-shaped pit with a narrow opening. Cisterns were cut or dug in the limestone rock and lined with plaster to prevent seepage. They were used to collect and store rain water or water carried up from a spring.

[38:6]  ³ tn Heb “the son of the king.” See the translator’s note on Jer 36:26 for the rendering here.

[38:6]  ⁴ tn Heb “And they let Jeremiah down with ropes and in the cistern there was no water, only mud, and Jeremiah sank in the mud.” The clauses have been reordered and restructured to create a more natural and smoother order in English.

[41:7]  ⁵ tn The words “and threw their bodies” result from the significant use of the preposition אֶל (’el, so GKC 384 §119.gg and BDB 39 s.v. אֶל 1). Hence the suggestion in BHS (fn a) that the Syriac and two Greek mss are reading a different text is not really a textual issue but a translational one; the versions are supplying the words for stylistic purposes as has been done here.