The Sufferings of Jeremiah
The scroll is burned
1 This word from Yahweh came to Jeremiah in the fourth year of Jehoiakim son of Josiah.
2 “Get a scroll and write on it all that I have spoken to you concerning Jeru sa lem, Judah and all the nations, from the first day I spoke to you in the time of Josiah until this day.
3 Perhaps when the people of Judah hear of all the afflictions I intend to send them, to make each of them turn away they would decide to turn from their wicked ways. Hence I may forgive their wickedness and sin.”
4 Jeremiah then called Baruch son of Neriah and while Jeremiah dictated, Ba ruch wrote on the scroll all that Yah weh had said.
5 Then Jeremiah com man d ed Baruch, “I am in jail and cannot go to Yahweh’s House.
6 So you go to Yah weh’s House on a day of fasting and read publicly all that you wrote as I dictated. Read it to all the people of Judah who come in from their towns.
7 Perhaps they will entreat Yahweh and each one will turn from his wickedness, for great is the wrath of Yahweh and the punishment with which he has threatened this people.”
8 So Baruch Neriah’s son did all that the prophet Jeremiah had commanded about this reading in the House of Yah weh.
9 In the ninth month of the fifth year of Josiah’s son Jehoiakim, king of Judah, a fast before Yahweh was proclaimed to all the peo ple in Jerusalem and all the people who came from the towns of Judah.
Then in the House of Yahweh Baruch read publicly the words of Jeremiah written in the scroll.
10 This he did in the room of the sec retary Gemariah Shapan’s son, in the upper court at the entry of the New Gate of the House of Yah weh.
11 When Micaiah son of Gemariah, son of Shaphan heard all of Yah weh’s words written on the scroll
12 he went to the secretary’s room in the king’s house where all the officials were sitting – Elishama, the secretary, Delaiah, son of She ma i ah; Elnathan, son of Acbor; Ge ma ri ah, son of Sha phan; Zede ki ah, son of Hana niah, and the rest of the officials.
13 Micaiah told them all that he had heard when Baruch read the the content of the scroll to the people.
14 Then all the officials sent Jehudi, son of Netaniah, the son of Shele miah, the son of Cushi, to say to Baruch, “Bring the scroll from which you read to all the people and come!” So Baruch went with the scroll in his hand.
15 They told him to sit down and read it to them, and Baruch read it to them.
16 When they heard all that, they gazed at one another in fear and said, “We ought to tell this to the king.”
17 They then asked Baruch, “May we know how you wrote that.” He said,
18 “As he dictated these words, I wrote them in ink on the scroll.”
19 Then the officials instructed Baruch, “Jeremiah and you have to hide and let no one know where you are.”
20 They kept the scroll in the room of Elishama the secretary and went to the king in the courtyard and reported all to him.
21 The king then sent Jehudi to bring him the scroll. Jehudi brought it from Eli sha mah’s room and read it to the king and to all the officials standing around him.
22 Now it was the ninth month and the king was sitting in the winter palace while a fire was burning in the fire pot in front of him.
23 When ever Jehudi finished reading three or four columns, the king would cut them off into pieces with the secre tary’s knife and cast them in the fire until the whole scroll was burned.
24 Neither the king nor his officials were afraid when they heard all these words and they did not tear their garments.
25 And yet Elnathan, Deliah and Gemariah had urged the king not to burn the scroll, but he did not listen.
26 Instead the king ordered Je rah meel, a son of the king, Seraiah son of Azriel and She lemiah son of Ab deel to arrest Baruch the secretary and Je re miah the prophet; but Yahweh concealed them.
27 A word of Yahweh came to Jere miah after the king burned the scroll with the words Baruch had written as Jeremiah dictated,
28 “Take another scroll and write on it all the words that were on the first one which Jehoiakim burned.
29 And tell Jehoiakim this message of Yahweh: You have burned the scroll and you said: This man dared to write that the king of Babylon will certainly destroy this land and wipe away from it men and animals!
30 That is why Yahweh has spoken against Jehoiakim, king of Judah: Not one of his descendants will sit on the throne of David. His dead body will be exposed to the heat of day and the chill of night.
31 I will ask him to account as well as his children and his attendants for their wickedness. I will pour out on them all the disasters and it will be the same for the people of Judah and the inhabitants of Jeru salem I have foretold against them, be cause they have paid no attention.”
32 Then Jeremiah took another scroll and gave it to Baruch son of Neriah, the secretary. He wrote on it all the words of the scroll that Jehoiakim king of Judah burned in the fire, and he added many more similar words.
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Comments Jeremiah, Chapter 36
• 36.1 Chapters 36-44 could be called “Jere miah’s sufferings:” they describe the fate of the prophet during the sieges of 598 and 587 and after the destruction of Jerusalem.
These are the last days of the kingdom of Judah. The events briefly related at the end of the second book of Kings take on a new meaning here because someone with much insight is experiencing them. In the midst of the masses who suffer without under standing, Jeremiah knows what God’s plans are. These people, who neither believe nor obey the Lord, must lose their material illusions, and then later the best of their children will come to a more profound faith.
Nevertheless, Jeremiah is crushed by his peo ple’s disaster. After having suffered be cause of them, he is now suffering with them and he be comes the figure of the suffering Savior, Christ.
Baruch, son of Neriah, was secret ary (36:26), something like the chancellor of the king. He was also Jere miah’s secretary and he may have written these chapters.
V. 23. The episode of the burned scroll takes place during the first blockade. Let us remember that in those days people wrote on strips of parchment, or sheepskin, which were rolled up.
37: Zedekiah is respectful toward Jeremiah. He is, in fact, at the mercy of his officials. Here, as in the Passion of Jesus, the rulers do not rule, but follow the mood of the majority.
IS JEREMIAH A TRAITOR?
How strange is Jeremiah’s attitude during this war in which the Jews defend their independence to death!
Jeremiah accuses his people and not the Chaldeans in whom he only sees God’s instrument.
Jeremiah advises surrender and sub mission to the foreign power. He even invites the exiled Jews to promote the prosperity of their conquerors.
And we cannot say that these are mistakes on the part of the prophet since his attitude cannot be separated from his message. Two reasons clarify Jeremiah’s position:
– On one hand, the Jewish nationalists do not know what God wants to do with Israel in the future. They see only defeat and slavery and they prefer to fight to death. Jeremiah, however, knows the extraordinary future that Yahweh has in store for Israel. Israel bears the hopes of the future world, and so they must not disappear in a hopeless struggle.
– On the other hand, the Jewish leaders focus only on the appearances of freedom and patriotism. To them, everything seems lost if they submit to foreign authority. Jeremiah, for his part, focuses on the heart. To be Jewish means to preserve Israel’s ideals and reasons for living; to be free means to serve Yahweh alone. And so, it is essential to him that his compatriots do not become contaminated by the gods and the false values of the Chaldeans; by comparison, to submit to the yoke of a Chaldean master seems a much lesser evil. Besides, Jeremiah shares the ideas expressed particularly in the book of Judges: if Israel keeps faith and observes the Law, sooner or later it will recover its independence and return home.
Put in modern terms, Jeremiah’s attitude can be summarized like:
Do not insist on fighting for causes or institutions which are no longer relevant to a world which has undergone irreversible changes and in which God calls us to a different mission.
Know that a people’s true independence is seen in their moral and cultural independence. It would be tra gic if their children, dazzled by a foreign way of life, were to sacrifice their traditional moral values, or in a subservient way adopt norms and forms of development im posed from outside.