Baruch 4: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The book of God's commandments is set before Jacob to take hold of, with life for those who keep it and death for those who leave it. The speaker tells Israel they were handed over to their enemies because they angered God by sacrificing to demons and forgot the God who raised them. Jerusalem, pictured as a widow left alone, speaks: she describes the nation that carried her children away, tells her children to take courage and cry to God, and says the one who brought these troubles will rescue them. She then declares that the city which rejoiced at her fall will mourn, and calls Jerusalem to look east and see her children coming back.

Claim by Claim

1. 4:1
   • This is the book of the commandments of God.
   • This is the law that endures forever.
   • All those who keep it will come to life.
   • Those who forsake it will die.
2. 4:2
   • Jacob is told to turn back.
   • Jacob is told to take hold of it.
   • Jacob is told to walk in the presence of its light.
   • The purpose is that Jacob may be illuminated.
3. 4:3
   • Israel is told not to give its honour to another.
   • Israel is told not to give the things profitable to it to a foreign nation.
4. 4:4
   • Israel is called happy.
   • The reason is that the things pleasing to God are made known to us.
5. 4:5
   • The speaker tells his people to be of good cheer.
   • The people are addressed as the memorial of Israel.
6. 4:6
   • You were sold to the nations.
   • You were not sold for your destruction.
   • You provoked God to wrath.
   • Because of that you were delivered to the enemies.
7. 4:7
   • You provoked the one who made you.
   • You did this by sacrificing to demons.
   • You did not sacrifice to God.
8. 4:8
   • You have forgotten the everlasting God.
   • That God brought you up.
   • You have grieved Jerusalem.
   • Jerusalem nursed you.
9. 4:9
   • Jerusalem saw the wrath of God coming upon you.
   • Jerusalem spoke.
   • She called on those who dwell about Zion to listen.
   • She said God had brought great mourning upon her.
10. 4:10
    • She said she saw the captivity of her sons and daughters.
    • She said the Everlasting brought that captivity upon them.
11. 4:11
    • She said she nourished them with joy.
    • She said she sent them away with weeping and mourning.
12. 4:12
    • She says let no one rejoice over her.
    • She is a widow.
    • She is forsaken by many.
    • She is left desolate for the sins of her children.
    • Her children departed from the law of God.
13. 4:13
    • They did not know his statutes.
    • They did not walk in the ways of his commandments.
    • They did not tread the paths of discipline in his righteousness.
14. 4:14
    • Those who dwell about Zion are told to come.
    • They are told to remember the captivity of her sons and daughters.
    • The Everlasting brought that captivity upon them.
15. 4:15
    • He brought a nation upon them from far away.
    • The nation is shameless.
    • The nation is of a strange language.
    • They did not reverence the old man.
    • They did not pity the child.
16. 4:16
    • They carried away the widow's dearly beloved children.
    • They left her desolate and alone without daughters.
17. 4:17
    • She asks what help she can give you.
18. 4:18
    • The one who brought these evils upon you will deliver you.
    • He will deliver you from the hand of your enemies.
19. 4:19
    • She tells her children to go their way.
    • She says she is left desolate.
20. 4:20
    • She has put off the clothing of peace.
    • She has put on the sackcloth of her prayer.
    • She will cry to the Everlasting in her days.
21. 4:21
    • She tells her children to be of good cheer.
    • She tells them to cry to the Lord.
    • He will deliver them from the power and hand of the enemies.
22. 4:22
    • Her hope is in the Everlasting that he will save you.
    • Joy has come to her from the Holy One.
    • The joy is because of the mercy that will soon come to you.
    • That mercy comes from the Everlasting, called our Saviour.
23. 4:23
    • She sent you out with mourning and weeping.
    • God will give you back to her with joy and gladness.
    • That will be forever.
24. 4:24
    • The neighbours of Zion have now seen your captivity.
    • They will shortly see your salvation from our God.
    • That salvation will come upon you with great glory.
    • It will come with the brightness of the Everlasting.
25. 4:25
    • Her children are told to suffer patiently the wrath that has come upon them from God.
    • Your enemy has persecuted you.
    • You will shortly see his destruction.
    • You will tread upon his neck.
26. 4:26
    • Her delicate ones have gone rough ways.
    • They were taken away like a flock caught by enemies.
27. 4:27
    • She tells her children to be of good comfort.
    • She tells them to cry to God.
    • They will be remembered by the one who brought these things upon them.
28. 4:28
    • It was your mind to go astray from God.
    • Being returned, you are to seek him ten times more.
29. 4:29
    • The one who brought these evils upon you will bring you everlasting joy.
    • That joy comes with your salvation.
30. 4:30
    • Jerusalem is told to take a good heart.
    • The one who gave Jerusalem that name will comfort her.
31. 4:31
    • Those who afflicted you are miserable.
    • Those who rejoiced at your fall are miserable.
32. 4:32
    • The cities your children served are miserable.
    • She who received your sons is miserable.
33. 4:33
    • She rejoiced at your ruin.
    • She was glad of your fall.
    • She will be grieved for her own desolation.
34. 4:34
    • I will take away the rejoicing of her great multitude.
    • Her pride will be turned into mourning.
35. 4:35
    • Fire will come upon her from the Everlasting.
    • The fire will last a long time.
    • She will be inhabited by demons for a long time.
36. 4:36
    • Jerusalem is told to look about toward the east.
    • Jerusalem is told to behold the joy coming to her from God.
37. 4:37
    • Your sons are coming.
    • You sent those sons away.
    • They come gathered together from the east to the west.
    • They come at the word of the Holy One.
    • They rejoice in the glory of God.

Words Worth Explaining

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

4:1

"This is the book" points back to the poem just before it, which praised wisdom. The speaker is identifying that wisdom with the written law of Moses: the book and the law are the same thing.

4:2

Jacob was the ancestor whose descendants made up Israel, and Hebrew poetry regularly addresses the whole nation by his name. "Jacob" and "Israel" here mean the same people.

4:3

The word behind "honour" is the Greek for glory or high standing. The warning is against handing over to foreigners the privileged position that belongs to Israel, meaning the law itself.

4:4

Israel was the name of God's people. It was also the name of their land.

4:5

"The memorial of Israel" is obscure in the Greek as well as in English. It can mean the people who serve as Israel's living reminder, or the people in whom Israel is remembered by God. The phrase is left unresolved because the original is.

4:6

The book is set after the Babylonian armies took Jerusalem in 587 BC and deported much of its population. "Sold to the nations" is a figure of speech for being handed over to foreign powers, not a record of an actual slave sale.

4:7

The Greek word is daimonia, spirits or lesser divinities. Greek speaking Jewish writers used it for the gods of other nations, so the charge is worshiping foreign gods rather than dealings with what a modern reader pictures as a demon.

4:8

From here on Jerusalem is spoken of as a woman, a mother who raised the people and has now lost her children. Cities were routinely personified this way in Hebrew and Greek poetry.

4:9

Sion is the older English spelling of Zion, the hill Jerusalem was built on and a standard name for the city itself. From this verse to verse 29 the speaker is Jerusalem, quoted in her own words.

4:10

"Captivity" here means deportation. The Babylonians moved conquered populations away from their homeland and resettled them, which is what happened to Jerusalem's people.

4:12

A widow in this world had lost her legal protector and her standing, which is why an emptied city is pictured as one. "Desolate" means stripped and left empty, not merely sad.

4:13

"Discipline" translates the Greek paideia, which covers upbringing, training and instruction as a whole, closer to an education than to punishment.

4:15

The description of a distant, shameless nation speaking an unknown language, sparing neither the old nor the young, is borrowed almost word for word from the curses in Deuteronomy 28. In the setting of this book it means the Babylonians.

4:18

In 1611 English a "plague" was any blow or calamity, not specifically a disease. The word here means the disasters of conquest and exile.

4:20

Sackcloth was a coarse, scratchy cloth of goat or camel hair, worn next to the skin as a public sign of mourning or of pleading with God. "The clothing of peace" is ordinary dress, what a person wears when life is going normally.

4:22

"Saviour" translates the Greek soter, meaning rescuer or deliverer. In this passage the rescue in view is being brought home from exile.

4:24

"The neighbours of Sion" are the peoples living around Jerusalem, who watched the deportation happen and will watch the return.

4:25

Putting a foot on a defeated enemy's neck was a standard image of total victory in the ancient Near East, shown in royal art and used in Joshua 10. It pictures the loser lying face down under the winner.

4:26

"Delicate" in 1611 English meant pampered, raised in comfort and used to soft living. It does not mean frail or sickly.

4:28

"Ten times more" is an idiom for a great deal more, not a measurable quantity. Hebrew and Greek both used ten this way for an emphatic multiple.

4:30

The one who gave Jerusalem her name is God. Naming carried the sense of claiming and defining something, so the argument is that the namer remains responsible for the city he named.

4:31

"Miserable" here is a cry of woe against someone, meaning wretched or doomed, in the sense of deserving pity. It does not describe how those people feel.

4:32

The cities the children "served" are the places in Babylonia where deportees were put to work as subject labor. "She that received thy sons" is the city that took the exiles in, unnamed here but Babylon in the setting of the book.

4:35

Ruined cities were commonly described as haunted by spirits and wild creatures; the same picture is used of Babylon in Isaiah 13. "Long to endure" is older English for lasting a long time.

4:36

Babylon lay east of Jerusalem, so the road home ran from east to west. Looking east is looking down the road the exiles would come by.

4:37

"From the east to the west" can mean the journey home, which ran westward from Babylon, or a gathering of scattered people from every direction. The Greek allows both.