If one would tell the Judeans that the fall of their city was their deserved punishment instead of an inconceivable disaster, then one could expect bitter reactions from them. This is what Jeremiah experienced. In this fourth and final part of the song, he pleads with God to help him (and his God-fearing friends) against persecutors.
Most Judeans could not take Jeremiah’s prophesies against their church, their state, their temple, their religion. They hated him for it and saw him as a traitor. The kings, priests, “prophets,” and even his own family went against him (Jeremiah 11:21; Jeremiah 12:6; Jeremiah 20:1–6; Jeremiah 28:1–17; Jeremiah 37:15). This was all “without cause,” as Jeremiah says here. He was not the one who caused judgment to come over them! Yet, like hunters keep chasing a bird, they kept seeking his life.
Finally, Jeremiah’s enemies threw him into a muddy well (Jeremiah 38:1–13). In this well, as many times before, he came close to death (to being “cut off”). In these verses the well also serves as a metaphor for all his suffering under persecution.
52 “I have been hunted like a bird by those who were my enemies without cause;