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Baruch read in their ears. 16. And it came to pass, when they heard all the words, they looked at one another with alarm, and said to Baruch: We must verily make known all these words to the king. 17. And they questioned Baruch thus: Tell us now, how thou wrotest all these words from his mouth? 18. Then Baruch said to them: He spake all these words to me with his mouth, whilst I wrote them in the book with ink. 19. And the princes said to Baruch: Go, hide thyself, thou and Jeremiah, and let no one know where you are. 20. Then they went in to the king into the court and they had laid up the roll in the chamber of Elishamah the secretary, and made known to the king all these things. 21. Then the king sent Jehudi to fetch the roll, and he fetched it from the chamber of Elishamah the secretary; and Jehudi read it in the ears of the king, and in the ears of all the princes who stood about the king. 22. But the king was sitting in the winter-house in the ninth month, and a brazier was kindled before him. 23. And it came to pass, when Jehudi had read three or four pages, he cut it off with the penknife and cast it into the fire that was in the brazier, until he had destroyed the whole

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xxiii. 9, his great-grandfather having been a Cushite. Ver. 16. Properly, they were alarmed one at another, i.e. expressed their horror one to another at the import of the divine words (see ver. 24) by look and bearing, Ges. § 141. Ver. 18. p, he dictated (imperf. in case of frequent repetition or long continuance)., ink, here only. Ver. 22. n, brazier, filled with burning coal and set in the middle of the room, the inmates sitting round and warning themselves-used still in Jerusalem. лs, variously explained, lays greater stress on the noun, somewhat like our and indeed.' Ver. 23. Pages does not quite correspond to л, properly door-wings, denoting the columns, the four-cornered squares into which the rolls were divided. Such a column plainly covered the whole breadth of the roll, so that it might be separated therefrom at one stroke. From this usage has come the designation of chapters or sections as "doors" among the later Jews and Arabs. The burning suggests a papyrus or parchment roll. p, as soon as Jehudi had read, he (the king) cut it off; imperf., because the act was repeated piece by piece, as is also intimated by the infin. bem and what follows: until the roll was at an end, i.e.

roll in the fire that was in the brazier. 24. And they were not alarmed, nor tore their garments, the king and all his servants who heard all these words; 25. and although Elnathan and Delaiah and Gemariah begged the king not to burn the roll, he hearkened not to them. 26. And the king commanded Jerahmeel the king's son, and Seraiah son of Azriel, and Shelemiah son of Abdiel, to fetch Baruch the scribe, and Jeremiah the prophet; but Yahveh had hidden them.

27. Then the word of Yahveh came to Jeremiah, after the king had burnt the roll with the words which Baruch wrote from Jeremiah's mouth as follows: 28. Take thee again another roll, and write therein all the former words which were on the first roll, which Jehoiakim, king of Judah, burnt. 29. And respecting Jehoiakim, king of Judah, thou shalt say: Thus says Yahveh: Thou hast burnt this roll with the words : Wherefore hast thou written therein: "The king of Babylon will certainly come and destroy this land, and banish therefrom men and cattle"? 30. Therefore thus says Yahveh respecting Jehoiakim, king of Judah: He shall have no one to sit on the throne of David, and his corpse shall be cast

destroyed in the fire burning in ( for by) the pan. Ver. 24. The hearing of God's threats of judgment did not make the impression on them which it must have made if they had not been thoroughly hardened, 2 Kings xxii. 11. Ver. 25. The princes mentioned in ver. 12, who were so impressed (ver. 16), wished to restrain the king from the outrage, the fear of which led them not at once to bring the roll with them (ver. 20). Ver. 26. King's son, prince of the royal family, not the real son of Jehoiakim, who was now about thirty years old. Yahveh withdrew them from the sight of the spies. Without the Lord's forethought they would not have been hidden. Ver. 29 gives in the form of an objection the substance of the prophecy which had been burnt, and which inflamed the king's wrath, the threat, running through the whole book, of a complete destruction of the land by the king of Babylon. Ver. 30 was, of course, not said to the king in person. Hence he is spoken of in the third person, whereas in ver. 29 he was still addressed in living presence. The three months' (!) reign of Jehoiachin, son of Jehoiakim (2 Kings xxiv. 6, 8), is not a testimony against but for the fulfilment of this oracle.

out to the heat by day and the cold by night. 31. And I will visit on him, and on his seed, and on his servants their guilt; and I will bring on them, and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and on the men of Judah, all the ruin which I spoke respecting them, but they would not hear. 32. And Jeremiah took another roll and gave it to Baruch, son of Neriah, the scribe; and he wrote therein from the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of the book which Jehoiakim, king of Judah, had burnt in the fire; and many other words of the same kind were added.

Respecting the forbidding of burial, see on xxii. 19. Ver. 32. Not only was no prophetic saying banished from the world by the king's outrage, but the second roll was made still more complete, enlarged by many testimonies of like purport, especially those of later origin. here only, in pause.

EXPOSITION.

Contents of ch. xxxvi. Jeremiah's Prophetic Book and its Fortunes. a. Preparing of such a book in the fourth year of Jehoiakim (vv. 1–8); b. Its Destruction by the king in the next year (vv. 9-26); c. Renewal of the Book and Oracle respecting Jehoiakim and his nation (vv. 27–32).

In that eventful fourth year of Jehoiakim, whose influence on history as well as on Jeremiah's prophetic labours was pointed out, p. 199, the prophet received the divine direction. to record in a book-roll intended for public reading all his previous discourses which were chiefly of threatening import. There was a twofold reason for this being done just then. First, it might be expected that such a complete collection of the prophetic announcements which had remained unchanged for decades, now visibly hastening to fulfilment, so far as they had not yet been fulfilled, would make an overwhelming impression on the readers and hearers. In the second place, without doubt Jeremiah had been strictly forbidden, in consequence of the powerful discourses he had delivered there in this very year, to enter the temple and

address the people. The written word was now to take the place of oral preaching. Thus the basis was laid for the present compilation, which does not preclude earlier recording of single oracles. Jeremiah dictated this book to his trusty disciple Baruch, and commanded him to read it to the people "on the fast-day," ie. on the penitential days with which its contents were most in keeping, in the hope by this powerful testimony to bring the community to reflection and repentance before God. Baruch perhaps did this several times without the attention of the great ones being arrested. But ver. 9 ff. relates how on one such occasion, towards the end of the fifth year of Jehoiakim, the book in question fell into the hands of the king. On that specially solemn fastday, when all the people assembled and listened in the temple, the reading seems to have made a deeper impression. The attention of the secretary's son, in whose room Baruch was sitting, was drawn to the matter, which seemed to him grave and urgent enough to be at once reported to his father, who was in the royal treasury. The princes and dignitaries there assembled sent for Baruch with his roll and had it read. They were not insensible to the divine greatness of what they heard, were receptive to God's word, and wished no ill to Jeremiah; and the contents of the roll startled them greatly. They felt themselves bound to inform the king of the matter, not merely from political motives, but that the head of the nation might know the threats coming to all appearance from the Lord. But they first advised Baruch to take refuge along with his master in a safe hiding-place, knowing as they did the tyrant so well. In fact Jehoiakim, who desired at once to see the roll, on hearing the writing showed no sign of a troubled conscience, but cast the roll piece by piece, as it was read to him, into the fire in order to demonstrate his scorn, and, still more, his indignation at the prophet's treasonable language. He would also have seized the prophet's person. But at God's bidding Jeremiah

had followed the counsel of the princes and remained in hiding under the care of his God, but not idle or dismayed. On hearing of the unexampled violence towards the word of God of which the king had been guilty, he received the oracle given in ver. 30, which agrees substantially with the sentence passed in xxii. 18 f. Jeremiah met the foolish violence, by which God's enemy thought to banish that mighty word from the world, with the renewed assurance, that the hateful prophecies would all be fulfilled, and as a pledge of this cheerfully wrote them again, and that not in a reduced but an enlarged form. This example of the way in which a prophet, not at his own will and at random, but at God's express and repeated command, as well as with the special assistance of God's Spirit and God's outward protection, committed his oracles to writing, has an important bearing also on those prophetical books, the occasion of whose origin is not expressly noted. The God who inspired these discourses also cared for and watched over their preservation.

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