Ebed-Melech
Pulter chooses not to identify the name of the man she calls “one of Ham’s cursed race,” but the source of the story is the Book of Jeremiah 38:6–13, and there he is called Ebed-Melech. He is an Ethiopian eunuch who serves King Zedekiah at the Jerusalem court where the prophet Jeremiah had been imprisoned. When Jeremiah’s prophecies about the fall of Jerusalem offend the city’s princes, they cast him into an underground cell without food or water. Recognizing that Jeremiah would likely die there, Ebed-Melech went to the king and revealed what the princes had done. Ebed-Melech was instructed to bring Jeremiah out of the pit, thereby saving the prophet from a slow, cruel death.
In this first excerpt, we see the story of Ebed-Melech in the Old Testament text that Pulter would likely have read.
6. Then took they Jeremiah, and cast him into the dungeon of Malachiah, the son of Hammelech, that was in the court of the prison: and they let down Jeremiah with cords: and in the dungeon there was no water, but mire: so Jeremiah sunk in the mire. 7. Now when Ebed-Melech the Ethiopian, one of the eunuchs which was in the king’s house, heard that they had put Jeremiah in the dungeon (the king then sitting in the gate of Benjamin.) 8. Ebed-melech went forth out of the king’s house, and spoke to the king, saying 9. “My lord the king, these men have done evil in all that they have done to Jeremiah the Prophet, whom they have cast into the dungeon, and he is like to die for hunger in the place where he is, for there is no more bread in the city. 10. Then the king commanded Ebed-melech the Ethiopian, saying “Take from hence thirty men with the, and take up Jeremiah the Prophet out of the dungeon before he die.” 11. So Ebed-Melech took the men with him, and went into the house of the king under the treasury, and took from there old cast clouts and old rotten rags, and let them down by cords into the dungeon to Jeremiah. 12. And Ebed-Melech the Ethiopian said unto Jeremiah, “Put now these old cast clouts and rotten rags under thine arm holes, and under the cords.” And Jeremiah did so. 13. So they drew up Jeremiah with cords, and took him up out of the dungeon, and Jeremiah remained in the court of the prison.
In this late-seventeenth-century engraving, Ebed-Melech, the man on the left gesturing at Jeremiah, is visually demarcated from the others by his dark skin, decorative clothing, and turban.
Jeremia uit de kuil getrokken [Jeremiah is pulled out of the pit], Jan Luyken, 1698. Rijksmuseum.
The idea that Ebed-Melech, a black African who saves Jeremiah, was “one of Ham’s cursed race” is so uncontentious to Pulter that she makes the reference in “Aristomenes” without any further explanation or justification. The Hebrew scholar and minister John Weems, however, found in the Bible a number of contradictions in the theory, citing examples when the offspring of Ham’s son Canaan are not cursed to be servants and slaves but rather blessed and chosen by God. For Weems, Ebed-Melech presents a case in which the curse has been “mitigated” or lessened in severity. However, Weems still believes that the “curse of Ham” explains why “blackmoores are sold” as slaves in his time. For more on how the curse of Ham was used in seventeenth century race-making, see David M. Whitford’s The Curse of Ham in the Early Modern Era: The Bible and the Justifications for Slavery (New York: Routledge, 2016).
[Some of the posterity of Ham had a mitigation of their servitude.]
This servitude was somewhat mitigated in some of their posterity; the Gibionites were of the offspring of Canaan, Josh 9.25.27. Yet they had the blessing of God upon their service, and he continued them; although Saul would have rooted them out, 2. Sam. 21. So the Cherethites were Canaanites; yet the Lord mitigated their service, for they became David’s guard, and so it was mitigated in Urijah the Hittite, and Ebed-melech the blackmoore, and in Arauna the Jebusite, and in the woman of Canaan; but yet the servitude continued still upon the posterity of the seven nations, 1. King. 9.21. Salomon did levy a tribute of bond-service upon them unto this day. And after the captivity, Nehem. 11.3. and this curse lyeth yet upon the posterity, as the blackmoores are sold for slaves unto this day, and the Egyptians are vagabonds.
In a spiritual treatise published in 1647, Elizabeth Warren of Woodbridge (b. 1617), author of three religious pamphlets during the English civil wars, refers to the story of Ebed-Melech and Jeremiah to remind her readers that God provides for his chosen ones. Here, Ebed-Melech is commended for his compassion for Jeremiah and elevated above the apostates, princes, people, and king of Jerusalem who imprisoned the prophet. While Warren’s Ebed-Melech plays an active role in petitioning for Jeremiah’s release and serving as “gracious instrument” in God’s plan, modern readers may find that both Warren’s providentialist approach reinforces his subservient role as a “Black-more” for God’s use.
In gathering observations, we may wisely obtain the knowledge of God’s faithfulness extended to his own, whom he supports and sustains in all afflictions, relieving and rescuing them in the needful time of trouble. They may, indeed, with Daniel be cast into the den, but God will shut up the mouths of the lions. . . They may with Jeremiah be plunged in the dungeon, and stick fast in the mire an uncomfortable posture, till Ethiopian Ebed-melech compassionately condoling, prevails by petition to procure his enlargement, wherein we may view what various occurrents God makes subservient to his sacred counsel. The Prophet shall preach and proclaim the judgments, inevitably ensuing to those rebellious Apostates, the Princes, and people shall combine together in a cruel design to put him to death, and the King shall abuse his regal power by complying with them in their bloody stratagem whose merciless intentions were not by fire or sword to put a period to his painful sufferings, but by a lingering torment of famine, cold, and stench, to macerate and torture his [Jeremiah’s] distressed body, yet in the depth of this dungeon would the Lord be seen, as once in the mount unto faithful Abraham, using a Black-more as his gracious instrument to deliver his servant from this deadly danger.