Jeremiah 37:20

"And now hear, I pray thee, O my lord the king: let my supplication be presented before thee, that thou cause me not to return to the house of Jonathan the scribe lest I die there. Then Zedekiah the king commanded, and they committed Jeremiah into the court of the guard: and they gave him daily a loaf of bread out of the bakers' street, until all the bread in the city was spent. Thus Jeremiah remained in the court of the guard."

"Lest I die there ..." (Jeremiah 37:20). This was no remote possibility but a practical certainty if Jeremiah had been returned to that evil dungeon in the house of Jonathan.

"The king commanded ..." (Jeremiah 37:21). Jeremiah had not asked to be released, recognizing the practical impossibility of it, due to the murderous hatred of Zedekiah's ministers and advisers; and to the credit of the king he honored Jeremiah's request for a less intolerable confinement.

"The bakers' street ..." (Jeremiah 37:21). "This is the only place in Scripture where the name of a street in Jerusalem appears. It was a Near Eastern custom to name streets after those who worked in them."[10] We see the same phenomenon in New York City and other large cities where industries and professions tend to proliferate on certain streets. The garment district, the floral district, and the millinery streets, and the financial district are the result.

This change for Jeremiah, placing him in the house of the guard, was fortunate indeed for mankind, because, as Payne Smith pointed out, "That was the place and the time during which Jeremiah wrote the cheerful prophecies contained in Jeremiah 30-33."[11] These included the magnificent prophecy of the New Covenant in Jeremiah 31.