Jeremiah;- A message for Baruch (ch45)

In the fourth year of king Jehoiakim (see ch36) Jeremiah dictated all his previous prophecies to Baruch, who wrote them down in a scroll for the sake of a future public reading. As a reward for his work, the Lord gave Jeremiah a message for Baruch, which is recorded in ch45.

Baruch has been feeling sorrow. “I am weary for my groaning and I find no rest”. I believe he has been grieving over the troubles which the land is facing, as a result of its departure from the Lord. There are voices grieving over the state of the land in earlier chapters, but they are not always easy to identify. Sometimes the Lord is grieving, sometimes the personified land itself, and sometimes apparently the voice of Jeremiah. Perhaps there are times when Baruch is meant to be the spokesman.

In response, the Lord confirms that his grief is well-founded, as far as the land is concerned. “What I have built I am breaking down, and what I have planted I am plucking up.”

The there is the interesting question “Are you seeking great things for yourself?” I surmise that Baruch had secret hopes that being Jeremiah’s right hand man would put himself in a position of greater influence if Jeremiah’s mission were successful, just as the sons of Zebedee were hoping to sit next to the Son of man when he returned as judge (Mark ch10 v37). This may have been detected by the war-band leaders who accused him of prompting Jeremiah behind the scenes (ch43 v3). But that was not going to happen, because Jeremiah’s mission would not succeed in changing the course of events. For, behold, I am bringing evil upon all flesh, says the Lord”.

However, the promise, the reward for his services, was that Baruch’s own life would be kept safe through the crisis.

The natural place for this document is the story of ch36. However, someone, probably Baruch himself, must have decided to make it the tailpiece of the original collection of Jeremiah’s prophecies, the end of the narrative. If the collection was expanded later, the tailpiece was kept, in recognition of Baruch’s role in the preservation of the manuscripts on which the collection must have been based.

However the next six chapters are an appendix of prophecies “concerning the nations”, regarding the various enemies of Judah who assisted or exploited her downfall. Once this appendix had been added to the collection, somebody felt the need to tag on a fresh tailpiece, in the form of a copy of the 2 Kings account of the final crisis in the reign of Zedekiah.