594 TRANSLATION, NOTES, AND COMMENTS
MESSAGE AND AUDIENCE
The audience is told here about a word that came to Jeremiah from Yahweh in
the fourth year of Jehoiakim. Their attention will have been quickened, since
this year was a particularly anxious one for Judah and neighboring nations
round about. Jeremiah was told to take a scroll and write on it all the words that
Yahweh had spoken to him concerning Israel, Judah, and the nations, from the
time he first addressed the prophet in the days of Josiah, until the present day.
Yahweh's hope was that Judah might listen carefully to the evil being planned
for it, with the result that the people would turn from their evil so Yahweh
could forgive their sin.
Jeremiah does as he was instructed, calling a certain Baruch son of Neriah,
who then wrote from dictation all of Yahweh's words on a scroll. Baruch may or
may not have been a scribe of reputation at the time. In either case, the people
will note that this individual is now identified with Jeremiah and his struggle.
After the writing is concluded, Jeremiah tells Baruch that he cannot himself go
to the Temple, for which reason Baruch must go and read the scroll on a fast
day when, he is told, people from outlying areas will also be present in the city.
Repeating to Baruch what Yahweh has told him, Jeremiah says that perhaps on
this solemn occasion people will turn from their evil, for Yahweh's anger
against them is great.
The narrative closes by saying that Baruch did as commanded. The audience
hearing this narrative segment will know only that Baruch carried out Jere-
miah's directive to read the scroll in the Temple, nothing more. Details will
have to be supplied from other sources; some were probably already available,
since the reading was public. But will they not want to know what happened
behind the scenes, what the reaction was among the princes and the priests,
and how the king responded to what he heard? They will remember how Josiah
responded when he heard the newly-found Temple law-book, how he rent his
clothes, sought an oracle from the prophetess Huldah, and then carried out a
reform that turned the nation upside down, for the good. This king may have
responded differently. What did he do? They certainly need to know more.
As the superscription states, this narrative reports an event that occurred in
605 B.C. But the narrative could not have been written up until at least a year
after, since v 8 states that the scroll had been read, and this took place the fol-
lowing year. For the audience hearing a reading of the entire Jehoiakim Clus-
ter, also the whole of chaps. 24-36, the present narrative will introduce Baruch
as the scribe who figured prominently in preserving the Jeremiah legacy.
- More on the Scroll's First Reading (36:9-26)
36 9 And it happened in the fifth year of Jehoiakim son of Josiah, king of
Judah, in the ninth month, they called a fast before Yahweh-all the
people in Jerusalem and all the people who had come in from the cities of
Judah-in Jerusalem.^10 And Baruch read aloud from the scroll the words