Jeremiah 36
Once while the king would riot let Jeremiah go to speak to the people, God told him to write in a book the words He had told him, so His words could be read to the people, and they might he sorry for their bad ways and believe Him.
Jeremiah asked a scribe, named Baruch, to help him; Jeremiah spoke the words and Baruch wrote them. We do not know what they had for paper; the wide leaves of plants were sometimes prepared as paper, or skins were used; the words were written with pen and ink, and when done tied in a roll. There must have been many leaves to this roll as God had spoken much to Jeremiah.
When the writing was finished, Jeremiah told Baruch to go to the temple and read the roll aloud to the people.
The king, scribes, and nobles who attended to the affairs of the nation were not at the temple, but in another building. One man who heard Baruch read the roll, went to tell some of the nobles, and they sent for Baruch to bring the roll, and read it to them.
When they heard the words that God must punish those who kept on in sin, they were afraid, and knew the king would be more angry than before at Jeremiah, and they told Baruch to go hide with Jeremiah, and not let others know where.
The nobles put the roll away in a safe lace, and went to speak to the king in his room.
When the king heard about the roll, he sent for it to be brought and read to him.
It was winter time, and the men and the sat near an open fire.
The king listened to the reading of the first few sheets of the roll; then he took out his knife and cut them from the roll, and threw them into the fire.
A few of the men tried to persuade the king not to burn the writings, but he would not listen. Most of the men did not care, and he kept on cutting the roll and putting it on the fire until the whole roll was burned. Then he sent men to get Baruch and Jeremiah, and would have done them harm but the Lord kept them hidden.
Although the king burned the roll with the words of God, he could not prevent His words coming true: he kept on his wicked ways, until the soldiers of the king of Babylon bound him in chains and took him away from the city (2 Chron. 36:66Against him came up Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and bound him in fetters, to carry him to Babylon. (2 Chronicles 36:6)).
Afterward God told Jeremiah to have the same words written again. It would not be easy to do all that roll over, yet it was again completed. We now have those words in our Bibles in the “Book of Jeremiah.”
ML 03/15/1942