Charles Ellicott Commentary Jeremiah 38:6

"Then took they Jeremiah, and cast him into the dungeon of Malchijah the king`s son, that was in the court of the guard: and they let down Jeremiah with cords. And in the dungeon there was no water, but mire; and Jeremiah sank in the mire." — Jeremiah 38:6 (ASV)

The dungeon of Malchiah the son of Hammelech. —Literally, the pit, or cistern. The Septuagint agrees with the marginal reading in describing him as “a son of the king.” The same phrase is so translated in 1 Kings 22:26; 2 Chronicles 28:7, and would seem to have been an official or court title, applied to one of the royal house, as distinguished from others. (See Note on Jerahmeel in Jeremiah 36:26.) We have no data for judging whether this Malchiah is identical with the father of Pashur in Jeremiah 38:1; but it is not unlikely. In Lamentations 3:53-55 we have probably a reminiscence of these days of horrible suffering.

The cistern had been partly dried up (possibly because the supply of water had been cut off during the protracted siege), but there remained a thick deposit, three or four feet deep, of black fetid mud, and there, it is obvious from Jeremiah 38:9 of this chapter, his enemies meant to leave him to die of hunger. They probably shrank from the odium of a public execution, or thought, with the strange superstition prevalent in that region, that in this way they could escape the guilt of shedding the prophet’s blood. The death by starvation might easily be represented, even to themselves, as a death by disease.