A Scroll for Future Days (36:1-32) 589
nations, those which had been spoken up to the present time. The Urrolle
could not have been too long, since it was read aloud three times in one day.
from the day I spoke to you. I.e., from the day I first spoke to you (AmT; Hol-
laday).
from the days oflosiah, until this day. In 25:3 the elapsed time between the
13th year of Josiah and the 4th year of Jehoiakim is 23 years. After "Josiah"
here, the LXX adds a "king of Judah" title. The T and Vg read with MT.
- Perhaps the house ofludah 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 for-
give their iniquity and their sin. The reason for preparing the scroll and reading
it publicly is the same as for prophesying generally: that people might hear
Yahweh's word, turn from their evil ways, and receive Yahweh's forgiveness.
The way things stand now, iniquity and sins have kept away the good (5:25),
and in the end the people will be punished (14:10; 16:18). Zimmerli (1995:
- says that this word was designed to shake the people into returning to Yah-
weh. The "perhaps" sounds optimistic (Duhm), as it did earlier when Yahweh
sent Jeremiah to speak his Temple Oracles (26:3), but one wonders if Yahweh
is really any more hopeful now than when he dispatched Jeremiah and others
to find a righteous soul in Jerusalem (5:1). Still, the divine offer is genuine:
Judah can return and be forgiven. Here, however, divine forgiveness is depen-
dent upon a decisive return from evil (cf. Ezek 33:10-16; Isa 59:20). With the
new covenant, forgiveness will be a unilateral act of divine grace (31:34; 33:8;
50:20; cf. Ezek 36:25-29; also Mic 7:18-20, which bases divine pardoning on
the covenant with Abraham).
- Sn Jeremiah. called Ramch. snn nf Neriah., and Ramch. wmte from the dicta-
tion of Jeremiah all the words of Yahweh th.at he had spoken to him upon a writ-
ing-scroll. Jeremiah summons for the task of preparing a scroll a certain Baruch
son of Neriah, who writes from Jeremiah's dictation. This is our introduction to
the scribe who became Jeremiah's associate and friend to the end of his life.
We know nothing about any prior relationship between the two. With the bio-
graphical prose of the book beginning just about this time, particularly the
dated prose of chaps. 21-45, it seems likely that Baruch entered the scene now
in the early years of Jehoiakim's reign and began working with Jeremiah from
this point on (T. H. Robinson 1924: 220). Small amounts of prose and a virtual
absence of dates in chaps. 1-20 (there is the superscription of 1:1-3 and a gen-
eral "in the days of Josiah the king" in 3:6) point to the same conclusion, viz.,
that Baruch may have written small amounts of prose and done some editing of
material in 1-20, but only in later chapters, particularly 24 to 45, can his more
substantial contribution to the Jeremiah book be seen. Baruch was present
when Jeremiah purchased the field at Anathoth, assisting him in executing the
deed and affixing the seal (Avigad l 978a: 5 5). When the transaction was con-
cluded, Baruch was given custody of the open and closed deeds and instructed
by Jeremiah to preserve them for posterity (32:9-15). In the same year as now,
Baruch himself received from Jeremiah a word of hope for the future (chap.
45). Finally, it was Baruch who accompanied Jeremiah on the journey to
