Jeremiah 36:1

JEREMIAH 36

GOD'S WORD WRITTEN IN A BOOK;

THE BOOK READ TO THE PEOPLE; TO THE PRINCES; AND TO THE KING;

THE BOOK BURNED BY THE KING; AND THE BOOK REWRITTEN

The chapter heading here also serves as a list of the chapter divisions.

It was a critical hour in Israel's history. The Babylonians had just defeated the Egyptians in the Battle of Carchemish and were at that time moving into Palestine. "The crisis was at hand, and it was the psychological moment for Jeremiah to make a last-minute appeal for Jerusalem and Judea to repent and turn to the Lord."[1]

Jehoiachim, however, hated Babylon. He was a vassal of Egypt, for the moment compelled to be instead a vassal of Babylon; but he was planning a revolt. He had evidently appointed a fast day to lead the people in mourning over that Chaldean victory which had made him and Jerusalem tributary to Babylon, with the purpose, no doubt, of fomenting opposition to Nebuchadnezzar.

Jeremiah himself, however, was for the time restrained from appearing in the Temple; and that situation prompted the commandment of God to convert all of his prophecies to a written record, and the commandment for them to be read to the people in the Temple.

Before exploring the text of the chapter, we wish to reject a couple of critical allegations which radicals have attempted to fasten upon it.

(1) First, there is the proposition proposed by Robinson, namely, that, "The circumstances throw light on the origin of written prophecy,"[2] even calling this "The first roll written!" There is no truth whatever in such statements. There was, in the days of Jeremiah, absolutely nothing new, either in the science and industry of writing, nor in the writing of Biblical prophecies. That Jeremiah should have dictated to a professional scribe the words of his prophecies, and that the scribe wrote them in one of the customary rolls, either of papyrus or the skins of animals, both of which had been in use for centuries, as Graybill wrote, "was normal for the times."[3]

"Herodotus relates that the Ionians, from the earliest period, wrote on goat and sheepskins; and as the Hebrews were familiar with dressing skins at the time of their departure from Egypt, there is every reason to believe that Moses employed such materials in writing the Pentateuch."[4] Donald J. Wiseman authored an extensive eight-page article in the New Bible Dictionary, affirming that "the science of writing is at least as old as 3,100 B.C."; "writing is mentioned more than 450 times in the Bible"; "The Bible states that Moses wrote the Decalogue (Exodus 17:14), the words of God (Exodus 24:4), the Torah (Joshua 8:31), Deut. (24:1), all the statutes and judgments (Exodus 34:27), the legal enactments (Deuteronomy 24:1), the details of all the journeys of the Israelites (Numbers 33:2), etc., etc."[5]

Centuries before Moses, the laws of Hammurabi were inscribed on a solid block of granite (black diorite) eight feet high, which was discovered at Susa in 1902! Furthermore, there are at least two instances of writing long before Hammurabi! These facts are mentioned in an article by W. J. Martin in the New Bible Dictionary, pp. 501,502.

(2) The other critical canard is the allegation that, it must have been a very small collection of prophecies, because they were all read three times in a single day! Indeed, indeed! And where is there anything in the sacred text that supports a notion like that? The events described here are a summary; and all of the events mentioned probably took place over a period of several days. It evidently took several months to conclude the extensive Book of Jeremiah's prophecies. Also we have the repeated statement that "all the words of Jeremiah" (Jeremiah 35:13) were read some three times, with the exception noted in the text itself that the king did not wait to hear "all the words" but acted promptly to burn it. It is an unfounded and purely gratuitous "guess" that all of these things happened in one day, or even in one week. The text gives no hint whatever of the time frame in which these things happened.

Jeremiah 36:1-3

GOD COMMANDS THE BOOK TO BE WRITTEN

"And it came to pass in the fourth year of Jehoiachim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, that this word came unto Jeremiah from Jehovah, saying, Take thee a roll of a book, and write therein all the words that I have spoken unto thee against Israel and against Judah, and against all the nations, from the day I spake unto thee, from the days of Josiah, even unto this day. It may be that the house of Israel will hear all the evil which I purpose to do unto them; that they return every man from his evil way; that I may forgive their iniquity and their sin."

The date of the chapter is firmly fixed in the fourth year of Jehoiachim. "This was the year 604 B.C., following the victory of Nebuchadnezzar over the Egyptians at Carchemish."[6] "It is scarcely a coincidence that it was in this very month of December that the Babylonians assaulted, captured, and sacked Ashkelon on the Philistine plain; and not long afterward, Jehoiachim was forced to become a vassal of Babylon."[7] Halley further described the historical situation.

"Jeremiah at that time had been prophesying 23 years, from the 13th year of Josiah to the fourth year of Jehoiachim. The purpose was to have Baruch read a copy of all Jeremiah's prophecies to the people at a time when Jeremiah had apparently been banned from the temple area. It took a year or so to write the prophecies. Its reading made a profound impression on some of the princes, but the king reacted angrily, burning the roll in the fire."[8]