Baruch’s Book (1 of 2)

In context

In the fourth year of Jehoiakim, while Baruch was writing down Jeremiah’s words, the Lord sent him a message of his own: “Do you seek great things for yourself? Don’t seek them,” but he would escape with his life “wherever you go” (Jeremiah 45:1–5). The book of Baruch is in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles; most Protestant Bibles leave it out or print it apart as the Apocrypha.

It says Baruch read it in Babylon to Jechonias (Jehoiachin) and the captives “by the river Sud,” and they wept, fasted and prayed, and sent money to Jerusalem, asking the people there to pray for Nebuchadnezzar and his son (Baruch 1:1–12), as Jeremiah had told the captives to “pray to Yahweh” for the city where they were sent (Jeremiah 29:7). Then comes a long confession: “To the Lord our God belongs righteousness, but to us confusion of face” (Baruch 1:15). One verse is hard, recalling the famine in the siege (2:3).

Chapter 3 asks where wisdom can be found, in words like those of Deuteronomy: “Who has gone up into heaven, taken her, and brought her down from the clouds?” (Baruch 3:29; Deuteronomy 30:12). Its answer is that God “has found out all the way of knowledge, and has given it to Jacob his servant” (Baruch 3:36).