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Baruch 1: What the Passage Says

88 claims across 22 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Baruch 1 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

Baruch, in Babylon, writes a book and reads it aloud to Jechonias son of Joachim and to all the people living by the river Sud, who weep, fast, pray, and collect money. They send the money to the high priest Joachim and the people in Jerusalem, with instructions to buy offerings, to pray for Nabuchodonosor and his son Balthasar, and to pray for the exiles. They also send this book to be read as a confession in the house of the Lord, in which the people admit that they have disobeyed the Lord from the exodus out of Egypt until now.

Claim by Claim

  1. 1:1
    • These are the words of the book which Baruch wrote.
    • Baruch was the son of Nerias.
    • Nerias was the son of Maasias.
    • Maasias was the son of Sedecias.
    • Sedecias was the son of Asadias.
    • Asadias was the son of Chelcias.
    • Baruch wrote the book in Babylon.
  2. 1:2
    • The book was written in the fifth year.
    • The book was written on the seventh day of the month.
    • This was at the time when the Chaldeans took Jerusalem.
    • The Chaldeans burnt Jerusalem with fire.
  3. 1:3
    • Baruch read the words of this book aloud.
    • Jechonias son of Joachim, king of Juda, heard the reading.
    • All the people who came to hear the book heard the reading.
  4. 1:4
    • The nobles heard the reading.
    • The king's sons heard the reading.
    • The elders heard the reading.
    • All the people, from the lowest to the highest, heard the reading.
    • All those who heard dwelt at Babylon by the river Sud.
  5. 1:5
    • They wept.
    • They fasted.
    • They prayed before the Lord.
  6. 1:6
    • They made a collection of money.
    • Each man gave according to his ability.
  7. 1:7
    • They sent the money to Jerusalem.
    • They sent it to Joachim the high priest, son of Chelcias, son of Salom.
    • They sent it to the priests.
    • They sent it to all the people found with Joachim at Jerusalem.
  8. 1:8
    • At that same time Joachim received the vessels of the house of the Lord.
    • Those vessels had been carried out of the temple.
    • The vessels were to be returned to the land of Juda.
    • This happened on the tenth day of the month Sivan.
    • The vessels were of silver.
    • Sedecias son of Josias, king of Juda, had made those vessels.
  9. 1:9
    • Nabuchodonosor king of Babylon had carried away Jechonias from Jerusalem.
    • Nabuchodonosor had carried away the princes.
    • Nabuchodonosor had carried away the captives.
    • Nabuchodonosor had carried away the mighty men.
    • Nabuchodonosor had carried away the people of the land.
    • Nabuchodonosor brought them to Babylon.
  10. 1:10
    • They said they had sent money.
    • They instructed that the money be used to buy burnt offerings.
    • They instructed that the money be used to buy sin offerings.
    • They instructed that the money be used to buy incense.
    • They instructed them to prepare a grain offering.
    • They instructed them to offer it upon the altar of the Lord our God.
  11. 1:11
    • They instructed them to pray for the life of Nabuchodonosor king of Babylon.
    • They instructed them to pray for the life of Balthasar his son.
    • The purpose of the prayer was that their days upon earth might be as the days of heaven.
  12. 1:12
    • The Lord will give us strength.
    • The Lord will lighten our eyes.
    • We shall live under the shadow of Nabuchodonosor king of Babylon.
    • We shall live under the shadow of Balthasar his son.
    • We shall serve them many days.
    • We shall find favour in their sight.
  13. 1:13
    • They asked them to pray for them to the Lord our God.
    • They said we have sinned against the Lord our God.
    • They said the fury and wrath of the Lord is not turned from us to this day.
  14. 1:14
    • They instructed them to read this book which was sent to them.
    • The reading is to make confession in the house of the Lord.
    • The reading is to be done on the feast day and on the days of the appointed season.
  15. 1:15
    • They instructed them to say the following.
    • Righteousness belongs to the Lord our God.
    • Confusion of faces belongs to us, as it is this day.
    • This confusion belongs to the men of Juda.
    • This confusion belongs to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
  16. 1:16
    • This confusion belongs to our kings.
    • This confusion belongs to our princes.
    • This confusion belongs to our priests.
    • This confusion belongs to our prophets.
    • This confusion belongs to our fathers.
  17. 1:17
    • We have sinned before the Lord.
  18. 1:18
    • We have disobeyed him.
    • We have not hearkened to the voice of the Lord our God.
    • We did not walk in the commandments the Lord set before us.
  19. 1:19
    • From the day the Lord brought our forefathers out of the land of Egypt until this present day, we have been disobedient to the Lord our God.
    • We have been negligent in not hearing his voice.
  20. 1:20
    • The evils have cleaved to us.
    • The curse has cleaved to us.
    • The Lord appointed that curse by Moses his servant.
    • The Lord appointed it on the day he brought our fathers out of the land of Egypt.
    • The purpose was to give us a land flowing with milk and honey.
    • This is the case as it is this day.
  21. 1:21
    • We have not hearkened to the voice of the Lord our God.
    • We have not hearkened according to all the words of the prophets whom he sent to us.
  22. 1:22
    • Every man followed the imagination of his own wicked heart.
    • They did so to serve strange gods.
    • They did so to do evil in the sight of the Lord our God.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

1:1
Baruch son of Neriah is known from the book of Jeremiah, where he is Jeremiah's secretary and writes down the prophet's words at his dictation (Jeremiah 36). The names in this book come through Greek and so look unfamiliar: Nerias is Neriah, Chelcias is Hilkiah, Sedecias is Zedekiah, Maasias is Maaseiah.
1:2
The text does not say fifth year of what. Most likely it counts from the capture of Jerusalem, but the Greek leaves it open. "Chaldeans" is an older name for the Babylonians, after the region of southern Mesopotamia their ruling house came from. Babylon captured and burned Jerusalem in 587 BC.
1:3
Jechonias is Jehoiachin, and Joachim his father is Jehoiakim; "Juda" is Judah, the southern kingdom with Jerusalem as its capital. Jehoiachin was taken to Babylon as a young king in 597 BC, about ten years before the burning of the city described in verse 2, so the dates in this opening are hard to line up.
1:4
"Nobles" renders a Greek phrase meaning the powerful or influential men. "From the lowest unto the highest" is a set expression for every rank of society, with nobody left out. No river called Sud is known from any other source, and the manuscripts vary here.
1:5
Going without food on purpose is called fasting. People did it to show God they were sorry.
1:7
The high priest was the chief of the priests who served at the temple in Jerusalem, the senior religious office in Judah.
1:8
The vessels are the bowls, dishes, cups and utensils used in the temple service, made of silver and gold; the Babylonians carried them off as plunder when they took the city. "The house of the Lord" is the temple itself. Sivan is the third month of the Hebrew year, falling in May or June. Sedecias is Zedekiah, the last king of Judah, and Josias his father is Josiah. The King James reading "king of Jada" is a printing error for Juda.
1:9
Nabuchodonosor is Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. "Princes" here means the royal officials and leading men of the kingdom, not specifically the king's sons. The deportation described is the one of 597 BC, when the king, the court and the skilled and fighting men were marched to Babylon.
1:10
A burnt offering was an animal burned whole on the altar, none of it eaten. A sin offering was made to clear the guilt of a particular offense. Incense was aromatic resin burned to produce fragrant smoke. The King James "manna" is not the food from the wilderness story: it transliterates a Greek word borrowed from the Hebrew minchah, a grain offering of flour and oil.
1:11
Balthasar is Belshazzar, known from Daniel 5 as the last ruler of Babylon, though other records make him the son of a later king, Nabonidus, rather than of Nebuchadnezzar. "As the days of heaven" is a stock phrase meaning for as long as the sky lasts, that is, a very long life. Praying for the health of the foreign king was normal practice for exiles; Jeremiah 29:7 tells the deportees to seek the welfare of the city they were carried to.
1:12
Living "under the shadow" of a ruler means living under his protection. In a hot country, shade is shelter, so the image is of safety rather than gloom. To "lighten our eyes" draws on the idea that bright eyes show life and strength, while dim or darkened eyes show exhaustion and despair.
1:14
"Solemn" in 1611 English means formal or appointed, not gloomy; the solemn days are the fixed days of public assembly in the festival calendar. A confession here is a formal public statement of wrongdoing, said aloud by the whole gathering.
1:15
"The confusion of faces" is a Hebrew turn of phrase for public disgrace, the shame that shows openly in a person's face. It is set against "righteousness," meaning being in the right, so the sentence contrasts God being in the right with the people being visibly in the wrong.
1:16
Princes here means the leaders of the land. A prophet is someone who tells people what God says. "Our fathers" means the people who lived long before them.
1:18
"Hearkened" means listened with the intent to obey; in these texts hearing and obeying are the same act. The commandments given "openly" translates a phrase meaning set publicly before them, so that nobody could claim not to have known.
1:19
Long ago God's people were slaves in the land of Egypt. God brought them out and gave them a home.
1:20
"Cleaved unto us" means stuck fast to us, held on and would not come off. "The evils" are disasters and afflictions rather than wicked acts. The curse appointed by Moses refers to the lists in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28, which set out blessings that follow obedience and disasters that follow disobedience, exile from the land among them. "A land that floweth with milk and honey" is a standard phrase for rich country: good pasture for the herds that give milk, and abundant wildflowers for bees.
1:22
"Strange gods" means foreign gods, the gods of other nations; "strange" in 1611 English means belonging to strangers rather than odd. "The imagination of his own wicked heart" translates a word closer to stubborn intent or willfulness than to fantasy, and the heart in this idiom is the seat of thought and decision, not of feeling.

Read Baruch 1