A Scroll for Future Days (36:1-32) 581them all the evil he promised to bring. The reason: he called to them, but they
did not answer. An oracle of a different sort is given to the Rechabites. Speak-
ing to them directly, Yahweh says that because they have kept the commands
of Jonadab their father, a man from among them will stand before Yahweh all
the days.
This incident took place sometime during the reign of Jehoiakim-exactly
when, we cannot say. It could have been prior to 605 B.C., before Jeremiah was
debarred from the Temple, or else in 597 B.C., after Jehoiakim was dead and
Jeremiah had come out of hiding to address the nation, just before Jerusalem's
surrender to Nebuchadrezzar.
When this narrative is heard following the narrative reporting Jerusalem's
reneging on the covenant to liberate Hebrew slaves, an incident happening
under another king and a decade or more later, the audience is presented with
a contrast between the marginal Rechabites, who carried out an oath made to
Jonadab their father, and a disobedient Zedekiah and slave-owning popula-
tion of Jerusalem that did not carry out an oath solemnly made before Yahweh
their God.
Like Baruch and Ebed-melech, the Rechabites took on a subsequent literary
life of their own. An early Christian apocryphon, "The History of the Blessed
Sons of the Rechabites," which overlays an earlier Jewish work with Hellenistic
lore, is a highly embellished exegesis of the present chapter (Charlesworth,
OTP II: 443-61). Charlesworth dates the work between the first and fourth cen-
turies A.D., though in its present form it could be as late as the sixth century.
The Blessed Ones of the Rechabites dwell now with angels in a place like the
Paradise of God, where they pray to God day and night; it is in fact their occu-
pation (§ 11). Intercessory prayers are made for the wicked of earth, about
whom they hear from angels that have visited earth ( § 12). On this work and in-
fluences that may have shaped it, see Charlesworth 1982; 1986; and "Recha-
bites, History of," in ABD 5: 632-33.
C. A SCROLL FOR FUTURE DAYS (36:1-32)
- Baruch and the First Jeremiah Scroll (36:1-8)
36 1 And it happened in the fourth year of Jehoiakim son of Josiah, king of
Judah, this word came to Jeremiah from Yahweh:^2 Take for yourself a writ-
ing-scroll, and you shall write on it all the words that I have spoken to you
concerning Israel and concerning Judah and concerning all the nations,
from the day I spoke to you, from the days of Josiah, until this day.^3 Perhaps
the house of Judah will listen to all the evil that I am planning to do to
them, in order that they may turn each person from his evil way, and I will
forgive their iniquity and their sin.^4 So Jeremiah called Baruch son of Ne-
riah, and Baruch wrote from the dictation of Jeremiah all the words of