Baruch 3: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The prayer of the exiles continues: they appeal to the Lord Almighty as the God of Israel, admit the sins of their forefathers and their own, and describe their present captivity. The chapter then turns to a poem addressed to Israel, asking why it is living in an enemy's land, and answering that it has abandoned the fountain of wisdom. It asks who has ever found wisdom, and lists rulers, hoarders of silver, foreign traders and the giants of old, none of whom knew her way; only the one who made all things knows her, and he gave her to Jacob and to Israel. It closes by saying that afterward she appeared on earth and lived among people.

Claim by Claim

1. 3:1
   • The speakers address the Lord Almighty.
   • The speakers address him as the God of Israel.
   • A soul in anguish cries out to him.
   • A troubled spirit cries out to him.
2. 3:2
   • The speakers ask the Lord to hear.
   • The speakers ask the Lord to have mercy.
   • They say he is merciful.
   • They ask him to pity them.
   • They say they have sinned before him.
3. 3:3
   • God sits enthroned forever.
   • The speakers are perishing utterly.
4. 3:4
   • The speakers address the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel.
   • They ask him to hear now the prayer of the dead of Israel.
   • They ask him to hear the prayer of the children of those who sinned before him.
   • Those people did not listen to the voice of the Lord their God.
   • Because of that, these plagues cling to the speakers.
5. 3:5
   • They ask God not to remember the iniquities of their forefathers.
   • They ask God to remember his power at this time.
   • They ask God to remember his name at this time.
6. 3:6
   • God is the Lord their God.
   • They will praise him.
7. 3:7
   • For this cause God has put his fear in their hearts.
   • The purpose is that they should call upon his name.
   • They will praise him in their captivity.
   • They have called to mind all the iniquity of their forefathers.
   • Their forefathers sinned before God.
8. 3:8
   • The speakers are still this day in their captivity.
   • God scattered them there.
   • They were scattered for a reproach and a curse.
   • They were made liable to a debt or penalty.
   • This was according to all the iniquities of their fathers.
   • Their fathers departed from the Lord their God.
9. 3:9
   • Israel is called to hear the commandments of life.
   • Israel is called to give ear so as to understand wisdom.
10. 3:10
    • Israel is asked how it comes to be in the land of its enemies.
    • Israel has grown old in a foreign country.
    • Israel is defiled with the dead.
11. 3:11
    • Israel is counted with those who go down to the place of the dead.
12. 3:12
    • Israel has forsaken the fountain of wisdom.
13. 3:13
    • If Israel had walked in the way of God, it would have dwelt in peace forever.
14. 3:14
    • Israel is told to learn where wisdom is.
    • Israel is told to learn where strength is.
    • Israel is told to learn where understanding is.
    • The purpose is that Israel may also know where length of days and life are.
    • The purpose is that Israel may know where light of the eyes and peace are.
15. 3:15
    • It is asked who has found wisdom's place.
    • It is asked who has entered her treasuries.
16. 3:16
    • It is asked where the princes of the nations have gone.
    • It is asked where those who ruled the beasts on the earth have gone.
17. 3:17
    • Those rulers amused themselves with the birds of the air.
    • They hoarded silver and gold.
    • Men trust in silver and gold.
    • There was no end to their acquiring.
18. 3:18
    • There were those who worked silver.
    • They were anxious over it.
    • Their works cannot be searched out.
19. 3:19
    • They have vanished and gone down to the place of the dead.
    • Others have risen up in their place.
20. 3:20
    • Younger men have seen the light.
    • They have lived upon the earth.
    • They have not known the way of knowledge.
21. 3:21
    • They have not understood the paths of knowledge.
    • They have not laid hold of it.
    • Their children were far off from that way.
22. 3:22
    • The way of knowledge has not been heard of in Canaan.
    • It has not been seen in Teman.
23. 3:23
    • The sons of Hagar seek understanding on the earth.
    • The merchants of Merran and Teman seek it.
    • The tellers of fables seek it.
    • The searchers out of understanding seek it.
    • None of these has known the way of wisdom.
    • None of these has remembered her paths.
24. 3:24
    • Israel is told how great the house of God is.
    • The place of God's possession is large.
25. 3:25
    • It is great and has no end.
    • It is high and cannot be measured.
26. 3:26
    • Giants were there, famous from the beginning.
    • They were of great stature.
    • They were skilled in war.
27. 3:27
    • God did not choose them.
    • God did not give them the way of knowledge.
28. 3:28
    • They were destroyed because they had no wisdom.
    • They perished through their own foolishness.
29. 3:29
    • It is asked who has gone up into heaven and taken wisdom.
    • It is asked who has brought her down from the clouds.
30. 3:30
    • It is asked who has crossed the sea and found her.
    • It is asked who will bring her for pure gold.
31. 3:31
    • No one knows her way.
    • No one gives thought to her path.
32. 3:32
    • He who knows all things knows her.
    • He found her out by his understanding.
    • He prepared the earth for all time.
    • He filled the earth with four-footed beasts.
33. 3:33
    • He sends forth the light and it goes.
    • He calls the light back and it obeys him with fear.
34. 3:34
    • The stars shone in their watches and were glad.
    • When he calls them they answer that they are present.
    • They shone with gladness for him who made them.
35. 3:35
    • This is our God.
    • No other will be reckoned in comparison with him.
36. 3:36
    • He has found out the whole way of knowledge.
    • He gave it to Jacob his servant.
    • He gave it to Israel whom he loved.
37. 3:37
    • Afterward he appeared upon the earth.
    • He lived among men.
    • The one who appeared is left unnamed, and may be wisdom herself.

Words Worth Explaining

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

3:1

Baruch presents itself as the work of Baruch son of Neriah, the scribe who wrote down the prophecies of Jeremiah. The book is set among the Judeans deported to Babylon after Jerusalem fell in 587 BC, and the prayer that runs from 1:15 through 3:8 is spoken in their voice, as exiles far from home.

3:2

The King James line "ar thou art merciful" is a printing error for "for thou art merciful"; later editions correct it.

3:4

"Plagues" in 1611 English meant blows or calamities of any kind, not specifically disease. The Greek here is awkward and has been read two ways: either the dead of Israel are themselves praying, or the prayer is that of the children of a generation that has died. Translators differ, and the rendering keeps the looser sense the King James took.

3:5

"Our fathers" here does not mean their dads. It means grandparents and great-grandparents from long ago.

3:7

"Fear" in this sense means awe or reverence toward God, the attitude expected of a worshiper, rather than fright.

3:8

"Subject to payments" translates a Greek phrase whose sense is disputed: it may mean liable to a legally imposed penalty, or made to pay tribute to a foreign ruler. "A reproach and a curse" means that Israel's name became a byword, the example people reached for when they wanted to describe disaster.

3:9

"Hear, Israel" deliberately echoes the opening words of the most familiar of all Jewish prayers, the Shema of Deuteronomy 6:4. A reader of the time would have caught the echo at once.

3:10

Under the Law of Moses, touching a corpse or being in the same tent as one made a person ritually unclean, requiring a set period and ritual before normal worship could resume. Here the phrase describes the exiles' whole condition in a foreign land, not a single incident.

3:11

The Greek word is Hades, the shadowy underworld where the dead were thought to go. The King James renders it "the grave" throughout this chapter.

3:12

A spring is a place where fresh water comes up out of the ground. In a dry land, a spring kept everyone alive. Wisdom is called a spring like that.

3:14

"Length of days" is a standard idiom for a long life. "The light of the eyes" is an idiom for vitality and gladness: bright eyes meant a person was alive and thriving, dimmed eyes meant failing strength.

3:15

Wisdom is spoken of as "she" throughout this chapter. The word for wisdom is grammatically feminine in both Hebrew and Greek, and writers of this period regularly personified her as a woman with a house, storerooms and paths of her own.

3:16

"The heathen" in the King James simply means the nations other than Israel, the gentiles; it carries no comment on their character. Ruling "the beasts upon the earth" probably points to kings who hunted big game or kept collections of exotic animals, a standard display of royal power in the ancient Near East.

3:17

Keeping and hunting birds was a leisure pursuit of the very rich, and the line is listing the amusements of kings alongside their treasuries.

3:18

"Careful" in 1611 English meant full of care, that is, anxious or worried; it did not mean cautious or thorough. "Whose works are unsearchable" means that the silversmiths' craftsmanship was so fine it could not be worked out by looking at it.

3:20

To "see light" is an idiom for being born and coming into the world of the living.

3:22

Canaan, the coastal region later associated with Phoenician traders, stood proverbially for commercial shrewdness. Teman was a district of Edom with an old reputation for wise men; Jeremiah 49:7 asks whether wisdom is no longer in Teman, and Job's friend Eliphaz is called a Temanite.

3:23

The Agarenes are the descendants of Hagar, Abraham's servant and the mother of Ishmael, understood as Arabian tribes known for shrewd trading. Merran is otherwise unknown and may be a garbled form of Midian. "The authors of fables" means composers of proverbs and parables, a recognized class of professional sages.

3:24

"The house of God" here is not the temple in Jerusalem but the whole created world, pictured as God's dwelling; the next verse describes it as endless and unmeasurable.

3:26

The giants are the figures of Genesis 6:4, a race of enormous warriors born before the flood, whom later Jewish writing treated as the standard example of great strength without wisdom.

3:29

Verses 29 and 30 closely echo Deuteronomy 30:12-13, where Moses asks who will go up to heaven or cross the sea to fetch the commandment. The questions here are put about wisdom instead.

3:33

The light does exactly what God tells it. Here "fear" again means deep respect, not being scared.

3:34

"In their watches" pictures the stars as sentries standing at assigned posts through the night, in the fixed order in which they rise.

3:36

Jacob and Israel are two names for the same person, the ancestor renamed in Genesis 32, and both are used here as names for the whole nation descended from him.

3:37

The King James says "he", but the Greek verb is feminine and refers to wisdom, the "she" of the preceding verses; the rendering follows the Greek. "Conversed with men" uses "converse" in its older sense of living among people and sharing their daily life, not of holding a conversation.