Baruch 5: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Jerusalem is told to take off her mourning clothes and put on the beauty, robe, and crown that come from God, and is given a new name by God. She is told to stand up, look east, and watch her children come back, gathered at the word of the Holy One, after being led away by their enemies on foot. God has ordered hills leveled and valleys filled so Israel can travel safely, and God will lead them with joy in the light of his glory. This poem closes the book of Baruch.

Claim by Claim

1. 5:1
   • Jerusalem is commanded to take off the garment of her mourning and affliction.
   • Jerusalem is commanded to put on the beauty of the glory that comes from God.
   • That glory from God is forever.
2. 5:2
   • Jerusalem is commanded to wrap herself in the double cloak of the righteousness that comes from God.
   • Jerusalem is commanded to set a headdress on her head.
   • The headdress is the glory of the Everlasting One.
3. 5:3
   • God will display Jerusalem's brightness.
   • God will display it to everything under heaven.
4. 5:4
   • God will give Jerusalem her name.
   • That name will be hers forever.
   • The name is The Peace of Righteousness.
   • The name is The Glory of the Worship of God.
5. 5:5
   • Jerusalem is commanded to arise.
   • Jerusalem is commanded to stand on the height.
   • Jerusalem is commanded to look around toward the east.
   • Jerusalem is commanded to see her children gathered together.
   • Her children are gathered from the west to the east.
   • They are gathered by the word of the Holy One.
   • The children rejoice that God has remembered them.
6. 5:6
   • Her children went out from her on foot.
   • They were led away by their enemies.
   • God is bringing them back to her.
   • They are carried back lifted up with glory.
   • They are brought back as children of the kingdom.
7. 5:7
   • God has appointed that every high mountain be brought low.
   • God has appointed that the age-old banks be brought low.
   • God has appointed that the valleys be filled up.
   • The purpose is that the ground be made level.
   • The purpose is that Israel may walk safely.
   • Israel walks in the glory of God.
8. 5:8
   • The woods give shade to Israel.
   • Every sweet-smelling tree gives shade to Israel.
   • This shading happens by the commandment of God.
9. 5:9
   • God will lead Israel.
   • God will lead Israel with joy.
   • God will lead Israel in the light of his glory.
   • God will lead Israel with the mercy that comes from him.
   • God will lead Israel with the righteousness that comes from him.

Words Worth Explaining

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

5:1

The whole chapter addresses Jerusalem as if the city were a bereaved mother whose children have been marched off; the setting is the deportation of Judah to Babylon. Mourning clothes were a real garment, coarse sackcloth worn for a death or a public disaster, and taking them off was the recognized signal that the period of grief had ended. The King James "comeliness" simply means beauty.

5:2

The King James "double garment" renders a Greek word for the wide outer mantle thrown over ordinary clothes, the piece you put on to appear in public. A "diadem" was not a jeweled crown but a band of cloth or thin metal tied around the head, the ordinary mark of a king in the Greek-speaking world. "Righteousness" here carries its older and wider sense: not only moral correctness but the condition of having been put in the right and publicly vindicated.

5:4

In this tradition a name is a description rather than a label, so a name given by God is a statement of what the thing has become. Both names translate compressed Greek phrases that can be turned more than one way: "peace of righteousness" or "righteous peace," and "glory of godliness" or "the glory that comes from worshiping God." In King James English "called of God" means called by God.

5:5

"Stand on high" means climb to a high point and look out from it. Behind "from the west unto the east" the Greek reads literally "from the setting of the sun to its rising," a stock way of saying from every quarter of the earth; it does not describe one journey traveling westward to eastward. "Thy children" are the city's own inhabitants, the people carried away from it. "The Holy One" is a title for God.

5:6

In King James English "led away of their enemies" means led away by their enemies. Prisoners of war were marched off on foot, often roped or chained together, while being carried in a litter was how royalty and honored guests traveled; the contrast is between the two ways of making the same journey. The Greek at the end of the verse says they are brought back "like a royal throne," a compressed phrase translators have handled differently: the King James took it to mean they return as children of the kingdom, others that they are carried in as a king is carried on his throne.

5:7

"Banks of long continuance" is the King James rendering of a Greek phrase for the ancient, permanent hills or dunes, the ones that had stood as long as anyone could remember. The picture in this verse is road building: before a king traveled, gangs went ahead to cut down the high ground and fill in the hollows so the route ran level. The same image is used in Isaiah 40.

5:8

"Overshadow" in the King James means only to cast shade over, not to darken or blot out; the trees shelter the travelers from the sun along the road. The Greek verb is in the past tense, as though the shade had already been provided, which is why modern versions read "have shaded" where the King James has "shall overshadow."

5:9

Mercy means being kind to someone even when you do not have to be.