Two Kingdoms · c. 609–597 BC
Chapter 25
The Scroll in the Fire
When Jehudi had read three or four columns, the king cut it with the penknife, and cast it into the fire that was in the brazier, until all the scroll was consumed in the fire that was in the brazier.
For parents
A crowd seizes Jeremiah and says he must die (Jeremiah 26:8–11), and King Jehoiakim has the prophet Uriah brought back from Egypt, kills him with the sword and throws his body into the common graves (26:20–23). Pharaoh Necoh’s killing of King Josiah is recalled (2 Kings 23:29), and the warnings speak of murder and adultery (Jeremiah 7:9), the innocent blood King Manasseh shed (2 Kings 24:3–4) and Jehoiakim’s dead body thrown out to the heat and the frost (Jeremiah 36:30). Raiders are sent against Judah, Jerusalem is besieged, and ten thousand of its people are taken captive to Babylon (2 Kings 24:2, 10–16).
king of had killed King at . Josiah’s servants carried his body from Megiddo to Jerusalem in a chariot, and there they buried him in his own tomb. The people of the land chose Josiah’s son , him, and made him king in his father’s place in Jerusalem.
Jehoahaz became king at twenty-three, and his reign in Jerusalem lasted three months. His mother was Hamutal, the daughter of a man named Jeremiah, from Libnah. Jehoahaz did what was evil in the Lord’s eyes, just as his ancestors had done.
To keep Jehoahaz from reigning in Jerusalem, Pharaoh Necoh had him chained at , in the land of Hamath. Necoh also made the land pay a hundred of silver and one talent of gold, which is more than three tons of silver and about sixty-six pounds of gold.
Then Pharaoh Necoh made another of Josiah’s sons king in place of his father Josiah. His name was Eliakim, and Necoh changed it to . He took Jehoahaz away to Egypt, and Jehoahaz died there.
Jehoiakim gave Pharaoh the silver and the gold, and to pay what Pharaoh had ordered, he taxed the land. He made the people of the land hand over the silver and gold, each paying the amount set for him, and gave it to Pharaoh Necoh.
Jehoiakim became king at twenty-five, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. His mother was Zebidah, Pedaiah’s daughter, from Rumah. Like his ancestors, he did what was evil in the Lord’s eyes.
The Lord gave a message: “Stand at the gate of the Lord’s house and call out this message there. Say, ‘Listen to the Lord’s word, all of you from Judah who come in through these gates to worship the Lord!’”
“The Lord of Armies, the God of Israel, says this: Change the way you live and what you do, and I will let you go on living in this place. Don’t put your trust in lying words that say, ‘This is the Lord’s temple, the Lord’s temple, the Lord’s temple!’
“If you truly change the way you live and what you do, if you really deal fairly with each other, if you don’t mistreat the foreigner, the orphan and the widow, if you don’t kill innocent people here, and if you don’t follow other gods and bring harm on yourselves, then I will let you stay here, in the land I gave your ancestors long ago, for all time to come.
“Look, you trust in lying words that do you no good. Will you steal and murder, commit , lie under oath, burn to and follow other gods, gods you have not known? And then will you come and stand in front of me in this house that is called by my name, and say, ‘We are saved!’ so that you can do all these disgusting things?
“Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Look, I myself have seen it,” says the Lord.
“Go now to my place at , where I first gave my name a home, and see what I did to it because my people Israel were wicked.
“You have done all these things,” says the Lord. “I spoke to you over and over, and you didn’t listen. I called you, and you didn’t answer. So I will do to this house just what I did to Shiloh: this house that is called by my name, the house you trust in. I will do the same to the place I gave you and your ancestors.
“I will throw you out of my sight, just as I threw out all your relatives, the whole family of .”
Early in the reign of Josiah’s son Jehoiakim, king of Judah, the Lord gave this message: “Stand in the courtyard of the Lord’s house, and there speak to the people from all the towns of Judah who come to worship. Tell them everything I command you to say. Don’t leave out a word. Maybe they will listen, and each of them will turn from his evil ways. Then I may hold back the harm I mean to do to them because of the evil they have done.
“Tell them, ‘The Lord says: I send my servants the to you over and over, but you have not listened to them. If you won’t listen to me and live by my law, the law I have put in front of you, and won’t listen to their words, then I will make this house like Shiloh. I will make this city a curse to every nation on earth.’”
The and the prophets and all the people heard Jeremiah speaking these words in the Lord’s house. When he had finished saying everything the Lord had commanded him to tell the people, the priests and the prophets and all the people grabbed hold of him. “You must die!” they said. “Why have you prophesied in the Lord’s name and said this house will become like Shiloh, and this city a ruin where no one lives?” All the people were crowding around Jeremiah in the Lord’s house.
When the officials of Judah heard about this, they came up from the king’s palace to the Lord’s house and sat down in the entry of the New Gate of the Lord’s house.
“This man deserves to die,” the priests and the prophets told the officials and all the people. “He has prophesied against this city. You heard it with your own ears.”
Then Jeremiah answered the officials and all the people. “It was the Lord who sent me. He sent me to prophesy against this house and against this city, and to say every word you have heard. So now change the way you live and what you do, and obey the Lord your God. If you do, the Lord will hold back the harm he has said he will bring on you.
“As for me, look, I am in your power. Do with me what you think is right and good. But know this for certain: the Lord really did send me to you, to say all these words for you to hear. So if you put me to death, you will be guilty of killing an innocent man, you and this city and everyone who lives in it.”
“This man does not deserve to die,” the officials and all the people answered the priests and the prophets. “He has spoken to us in the name of the Lord our God.”
Then some of the land’s stood up and spoke to the whole crowd gathered there. “ of Morasheth prophesied in the days of king of Judah,” they said. “He spoke to all the people of Judah: ‘The Lord of Armies says:
will be plowed as a field,and Jerusalem will become heaps of rubble,and the mountain of the temple will be like a hilltop in a forest.’
“Did Hezekiah king of Judah and all Judah put him to death? Didn’t he fear the Lord and beg the Lord to be gracious? And didn’t the Lord hold back the disaster he had announced against them? We would be bringing great harm on ourselves!”
Another man who prophesied in the Lord’s name was son of Shemaiah, from . His prophecies against the city and the land said all the same things as Jeremiah’s.
When King Jehoiakim and all his fighting men and officials heard what Uriah said, the king tried to have him put to death. But Uriah heard about it. He was afraid, and he ran away to Egypt.
Then King Jehoiakim sent son of Achbor to Egypt, and some men with him. They fetched Uriah out of Egypt and brought him back to the king. Jehoiakim killed him with the sword and threw his body into the graves of the common people.
But son of Shaphan was on Jeremiah’s side, and so they did not hand Jeremiah over to the people to be killed.
In Jehoiakim’s fourth year as king of Judah, the Lord spoke to Jeremiah. “Get a scroll,” he said, “and write on it every word I have spoken to you against Israel, against Judah and against all the nations, from the day I first spoke to you in Josiah’s time until now. Perhaps the people of Judah will hear about all the harm I plan to bring on them, and each of them will turn back from his evil ways. Then I can forgive their wrongdoing and their sin.”
So Jeremiah called son of Neriah. As Jeremiah spoke, Baruch wrote down all the words the Lord had spoken to Jeremiah. He wrote them on a scroll, a long roll made for writing on.
Then Jeremiah gave Baruch his orders. “I am kept away,” he said. “I can’t go into the Lord’s house. So you go there on the fast day, a day of going without food, and read the Lord’s words from the scroll you wrote as I spoke. Read them to the people in the Lord’s house, and also to everyone from Judah who comes in from the towns. Perhaps they will plead with the Lord, and every one of them will turn back from his evil ways, because the Lord has warned this people of his great anger and fury.”
Baruch son of Neriah did just as Jeremiah the prophet had told him. In the ninth month of Jehoiakim’s fifth year, everyone in Jerusalem and all who had come in from the towns of Judah announced a fast in the Lord’s presence. Then, with all the people listening, Baruch read Jeremiah’s words from the scroll in the Lord’s house. He read them from the room of the son of Shaphan the , in the upper courtyard, by the entry of the New Gate of the Lord’s house.
When Micaiah, Gemariah’s son and Shaphan’s grandson, had heard all the Lord’s words from the scroll, he went down to the king’s palace, to the scribe’s room. The officials were all sitting there: Elishama the scribe, Shemaiah’s son Delaiah, Achbor’s son Elnathan, Shaphan’s son Gemariah, Hananiah’s son Zedekiah, and every other official.
Micaiah told them all he had heard when Baruch read the scroll to the people. So the officials sent Jehudi son of Nethaniah to Baruch. “Bring the scroll you read to the people,” they said, “and come here.” Baruch son of Neriah took the scroll with him and went to them.
“Sit down, please, and read it to us,” they said. So Baruch read it to them.
When they had heard every word, they turned toward one another in fear. “We will certainly tell the king all of this,” they told Baruch.
“Tell us,” they asked Baruch, “how did you write all this down as he spoke?”
“He spoke all these words to me out loud,” Baruch answered, “and I wrote them down in ink on the scroll.”
The officials told Baruch, “You and Jeremiah, go hide. Don’t let anyone know where you are.”
The officials put the scroll away in the room of Elishama the scribe. Then they went in to the king in the courtyard and told him everything it said.
The king sent Jehudi to fetch the scroll. Jehudi took it out of Elishama’s room and read it aloud to the king and to all the officials standing around him.
It was the ninth month. The king sat in his winter house, and in front of him a fire was burning in the brazier, a metal pot for hot coals. When Jehudi had read three or four columns, the king cut the scroll with a penknife and threw it into the fire in the brazier, until all of the scroll had burned up in the fire.
The king and his servants who heard all these words were not afraid, and none of them tore his clothes in grief. Elnathan, Delaiah and Gemariah had pleaded with the king not to burn the scroll, but he would not listen to them.
The king ordered Jerahmeel the king’s son, along with Azriel’s son Seraiah and Abdeel’s son Shelemiah, to arrest Baruch the scribe and Jeremiah the prophet. But the Lord hid them.
The king had burned the scroll, the one with the words Baruch wrote as Jeremiah spoke. After that, the Lord gave Jeremiah a message. “Get another scroll,” he said, “and write on it everything that was on the first scroll, the one Jehoiakim king of Judah has burned.
“And this is what you are to say about Jehoiakim king of Judah: ‘The Lord says, You burned this scroll, and you asked why it says the king of is sure to come and destroy this land and wipe out both people and animals in it. So the Lord says this of Jehoiakim king of Judah: He will have no one to sit on David’s throne. His dead body will be thrown out, in the daytime to the heat and at night to the frost. I will punish him, his descendants and his servants for their wrongdoing. I will bring on them all the harm I have announced against them, and on the people of Jerusalem and the men of Judah as well. They would not listen.’”
So Jeremiah got another scroll and handed it to the scribe Baruch son of Neriah. As Jeremiah spoke, Baruch wrote on it every word that had been on the scroll Jehoiakim king of Judah burned in the fire. Many more words of the same kind were added to them.
Among the books of the prophets is “the revelation which the prophet saw.” It begins with a cry:
Lord, how long will I cry for help,and you will not listen?I cry out to you, “Violence!”and you will not save?
A few lines later:
Look, I am raising up the ,that bitter and hasty nationwho march across the whole wide earthto take homes that are not theirs.
Later the Lord answers him, “Write the vision, and make it plain on tablets, so that whoever runs can read it.” And a little further on:
Look, his soul is puffed upand not upright within him,but the righteous will live by his faith.
And near the end of the book, in “a prayer of Habakkuk, the prophet,” he says:
Even though the fig tree doesn’t flourish,and the vines have no fruit,the olive crop fails,the fields grow no food,the flocks are gone from the sheep pen,and there is no herd in the stalls,yet I will rejoice in the Lord.I will be joyful in the God of my salvation!
While Jehoiakim was king, king of Babylon came up, and for three years Jehoiakim had to serve him. Then Jehoiakim turned against him and rebelled.
The Lord sent raiding bands against Jehoiakim: bands of Chaldeans, of , of and of . He sent them against Judah to destroy it, as he had said through his servants the prophets.
It was surely at the Lord’s command that this happened to Judah, to remove its people from his sight because of the sins of : all that he had done, and the innocent people he had killed. Manasseh filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, and the Lord would not forgive it.
The rest of what Jehoiakim did is written in the records of the kings of Judah. Jehoiakim died and joined his ancestors, and his son reigned in his place.
2 Chronicles says that Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up against Jehoiakim and put him in chains to carry him off to Babylon. It says Nebuchadnezzar also took some of the things used in the Lord’s house to Babylon and put them in his temple there. The rest of what Jehoiakim did is written in the book of the kings of Israel and Judah: the disgusting things he did, and what was found in him.
The king of Egypt did not come out of his land again, because the king of Babylon had taken everything the king of Egypt had held, from the to the river .
Jehoiachin became king at eighteen, and he reigned three months in Jerusalem. His mother was Nehushta, Elnathan’s daughter, from Jerusalem. Like his father, he did what was evil in the Lord’s eyes. 2 Chronicles says he was eight years old when he became king, and that his reign lasted three months and ten days.
At that time the men of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon marched up to Jerusalem and laid siege to it, surrounding the city. Nebuchadnezzar himself came to the city while his men were besieging it.
Then Jehoiachin king of Judah went out to the king of Babylon, with his mother, his servants, his officials and his officers. In the eighth year of his own reign, the king of Babylon captured Jehoiachin.
Nebuchadnezzar carried off from Jerusalem all the treasures of the Lord’s house and the treasures of the king’s palace. He cut to pieces all the gold things that king of Israel had made for the Lord’s temple, just as the Lord had said.
He carried away all Jerusalem: all the officials and all the brave fighting men, ten thousand captives, and all the craftsmen and metalworkers. No one was left except the poorest people of the land.
He carried Jehoiachin off to Babylon, along with the king’s mother and wives, his officers and the chief men of the land. He took them all from Jerusalem into captivity in Babylon. The king of Babylon also took all seven thousand fighting men to Babylon as captives, with a thousand craftsmen and metalworkers, all of them strong and fit for war. 2 Chronicles says that at the turn of the year, King Nebuchadnezzar sent for Jehoiachin and brought him to Babylon, with the precious things from the Lord’s house.
Then the king of Babylon put Jehoiachin’s uncle Mattaniah on the throne in his place and gave him a new name, . 2 Chronicles calls Zedekiah Jehoiachin’s brother.