Hammelech

Hammelech is treated in two notices in Jeremiah as either a personal name or an appellation meaning "the king." UPDV reads it the second way in both places, and so the figure dissolves into an ordinary phrase: a royal son who carries out an order, or a royal son whose pit becomes Jeremiah's dungeon.

The order against Baruch and Jeremiah

When the scroll of Jeremiah is burned, the king moves to seize the prophet and his scribe: "And the king commanded Jerahmeel the king's son, and Seraiah the son of Azriel, and Shelemiah the son of Abdeel, to take Baruch the scribe and Jeremiah the prophet; but Yahweh hid them" (Jer 36:26). Where another reading would treat the underlying form as a personal name "Hammelech," UPDV gives it as "the king's son" — Jerahmeel is identified by royal lineage, not by a father named Hammelech.

The pit of Malchijah

The same translation choice surfaces in the dungeon scene: "Then they took 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" (Jer 38:6). Again "the king's son" is taken as appellation. Read together, the two verses leave Hammelech with no surviving traces in UPDV as a person; the title resolves into a royal designation for the men who act on the king's behalf.