For Teaching

Jeremiah 36: What the Passage Says

98 claims across 32 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Jeremiah 36 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

In the fourth year of Jehoiakim, the LORD tells Jeremiah to write on a scroll every message he has given him since the days of Josiah, hoping the people of Judah will turn from their wrong ways. Jeremiah dictates the words to Baruch, who reads them aloud in the temple on a fast day; officials hear them, take the scroll, and report it to the king. Jehoiakim has the scroll read to him, cuts it up as it is read, and burns it, then orders Baruch and Jeremiah seized, but the LORD hides them. God tells Jeremiah to write a second scroll and announces judgment on Jehoiakim, and Baruch writes it all again with many similar words added.

Claim by Claim

36:1
- It happened in the fourth year of Jehoiakim son of Josiah, king of Judah.
- A word came to Jeremiah from the LORD.
- The LORD spoke, saying:
36:2
- The LORD told Jeremiah to take a scroll of a book for himself.
- The LORD told Jeremiah to write on it all the words the LORD had spoken to him against Israel, against Judah, and against all the nations.
- The words to be written span from the day the LORD first spoke to Jeremiah, from the days of Josiah, until that day.
36:3
- The LORD said it may be that the house of Judah will hear all the evil the LORD intends to do to them.
- The LORD said the purpose is that each man may turn from his evil way.
- The LORD said that then he would forgive their iniquity and their sin.
36:4
- Jeremiah called Baruch son of Neriah.
- Baruch wrote at Jeremiah's dictation all the words of the LORD that the LORD had spoken to Jeremiah.
- Baruch wrote them on a scroll of a book.
36:5
- Jeremiah commanded Baruch.
- Jeremiah said he was shut up or restricted.
- Jeremiah said he could not go into the house of the LORD.
36:6
- Jeremiah told Baruch to go and read from the scroll.
- Jeremiah said Baruch had written the scroll at Jeremiah's dictation.
- Jeremiah told Baruch to read the words of the LORD in the hearing of the people in the house of the LORD on a fast day.
- Jeremiah told Baruch also to read them in the hearing of all Judah who come from their cities.
36:7
- Jeremiah said it may be that their supplication will fall before the LORD.
- Jeremiah said it may be that each one will turn from his evil way.
- Jeremiah said the anger and fury the LORD has pronounced against this people is great.
36:8
- Baruch son of Neriah did according to all that Jeremiah the prophet commanded him.
- Baruch read the words of the LORD from the book in the house of the LORD.
- Jeremiah is called a prophet.
36:9
- It happened in the fifth year of Jehoiakim son of Josiah, king of Judah, in the ninth month.
- A fast before the LORD was proclaimed to all the people in Jerusalem.
- The fast was proclaimed to all the people who came from the cities of Judah to Jerusalem.
36:10
- Baruch read the words of Jeremiah from the book in the house of the LORD.
- He read in the chamber of Gemariah son of Shaphan the scribe.
- The chamber was in the upper court.
- The chamber was at the entrance of the New Gate of the house of the LORD.
- He read in the hearing of all the people.
36:11
- Michaiah son of Gemariah, son of Shaphan, heard all the words of the LORD from the book.
36:12
- Michaiah went down to the king's house, to the scribe's chamber.
- All the officials were sitting there.
- Elishama the scribe was there.
- Delaiah son of Shemaiah was there.
- Elnathan son of Achbor was there.
- Gemariah son of Shaphan was there.
- Zedekiah son of Hananiah was there.
- All the officials were there.
36:13
- Michaiah declared to them all the words he had heard.
- He had heard them when Baruch read from the book in the hearing of the people.
36:14
- All the officials sent Jehudi son of Nethaniah, son of Shelemiah, son of Cushi, to Baruch.
- They told Baruch to take in his hand the scroll he had read in the hearing of the people and to come.
- Baruch son of Neriah took the scroll in his hand.
- Baruch came to them.
36:15
- They told Baruch to sit down.
- They told Baruch to read the scroll in their hearing.
- Baruch read it in their hearing.
36:16
- When they heard all the words, they were afraid, each toward his neighbor.
- They said to Baruch that they would surely tell the king all these words.
36:17
- They asked Baruch to tell them how he wrote all these words from Jeremiah's mouth.
36:18
- Baruch answered them.
- Baruch said Jeremiah pronounced all these words to him with his mouth.
- Baruch said he wrote them in the book with ink.
36:19
- The officials told Baruch to go and hide, he and Jeremiah.
- The officials said no one should know where they were.
36:20
- They went in to the king into the court.
- They deposited the scroll in the chamber of Elishama the scribe.
- They told all the words in the hearing of the king.
36:21
- The king sent Jehudi to fetch the scroll.
- Jehudi took it from the chamber of Elishama the scribe.
- Jehudi read it in the hearing of the king.
- Jehudi read it in the hearing of all the officials standing beside the king.
36:22
- The king was sitting in the winter house.
- It was the ninth month.
- A fire was burning in the brazier before him.
36:23
- When Jehudi had read three or four columns of the scroll, the king cut it with a scribe's knife.
- The king threw it into the fire that was in the brazier.
- This continued until the whole scroll was consumed in the fire in the brazier.
36:24
- They were not afraid.
- They did not tear their garments.
- This applies to the king and all his servants who heard all these words.
36:25
- Elnathan, Delaiah, and Gemariah urged the king not to burn the scroll.
- The king would not listen to them.
36:26
- The king commanded Jerahmeel, described as the king's son or as son of Hammelech, along with Seraiah son of Azriel and Shelemiah son of Abdeel, to seize Baruch the scribe and Jeremiah the prophet.
- The LORD hid them.
36:27
- The word of the LORD came to Jeremiah.
- This came after the king had burned the scroll and the words that Baruch wrote at Jeremiah's dictation.
- The LORD spoke, saying:
36:28
- The LORD told Jeremiah to take again another scroll for himself.
- The LORD told him to write on it all the former words that were on the first scroll.
- The LORD said Jehoiakim king of Judah had burned the first scroll.
36:29
- The LORD told Jeremiah to say concerning Jehoiakim king of Judah: Thus says the LORD.
- The LORD said Jehoiakim burned this scroll.
- The LORD said Jehoiakim had said: Why have you written on it that the king of Babylon will certainly come and destroy this land and make man and beast cease from it?
36:30
- The LORD said: Therefore thus says the LORD concerning Jehoiakim king of Judah.
- The LORD said Jehoiakim will have no one to sit on the throne of David.
- The LORD said Jehoiakim's corpse will be cast out to the heat by day and to the frost by night.
36:31
- The LORD said he will punish Jehoiakim, his offspring, and his servants for their iniquity.
- The LORD said he will bring upon them, upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and upon the men of Judah all the evil he pronounced against them.
- The LORD said they did not listen.
36:32
- Jeremiah took another scroll.
- Jeremiah gave it to Baruch the scribe, son of Neriah.
- Baruch wrote on it at Jeremiah's dictation all the words of the book that Jehoiakim king of Judah had burned in the fire.
- Many similar words were added to them besides.

Words Worth Explaining

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

36:1: The fourth year of Jehoiakim was about 605 BC. Dates were given by counting from the start of a king's reign, since there was no era-based calendar. This was the year Babylon crushed Egypt at Carchemish and became the dominant power over the whole region, which is the background to the warnings in the scroll.
36:2: The King James "roll of a book" means a scroll: a long strip of papyrus or prepared animal skin, written in columns and rolled up. Bound books with pages did not exist yet. "Israel" alongside "Judah" refers to the northern kingdom, destroyed by Assyria about a century earlier, and to the people as a whole.
36:3: "Iniquity" is an old word for doing wrong on purpose. The King James pairs it with "sin" the way we might say wrong and wrongdoing together.
36:4: Baruch was a professional scribe. Writing was a specialized trade, and dictating to a trained writer was the normal way anyone, including a prophet, produced a document.
36:5: "I am shut up" translates a Hebrew word meaning restrained or detained. The text does not say why, whether Jeremiah was under arrest, or banned from the temple grounds after earlier confrontations there. The ambiguity is in the original.
36:6: A fast day meant going without food as a public act of mourning or urgent appeal, usually declared in an emergency. It drew crowds in from the countryside to the temple, which is why Jeremiah chooses that day for the reading.
36:7: "Present their supplication" means to beg humbly for mercy, the way a person would ask a king for a pardon.
36:8: "The house of the LORD" is the temple in Jerusalem, the one building where Israel worshiped God. It had open courtyards where crowds could gather.
36:9: The ninth month in the Hebrew calendar (Kislev) falls roughly in late November and December, the cold, rainy season, which is why there is a fire burning in verse 22. This is more than a year after the scroll was written in verse 4.
36:10: A "chamber" was one of the rooms built around the temple courtyards and used by priests and officials as offices, so this was a semi-public setting. "Scribe" in the King James does not mean a copyist here: it was a senior post in the government, something like secretary of state. Shaphan's family held such posts across several generations.
36:12: "Princes" in the King James means the officials and nobles of the royal court, not sons of the king. "The king's house" means the palace, not a private residence. Gemariah, in whose temple room Baruch had just read, is sitting among them.
36:14: Jehudi's ancestry is traced back three generations, which is unusual and marks him as a man of standing. His great-grandfather's name, Cushi, means "the Cushite", a person from Cush, the region south of Egypt.
36:16: The King James "they were afraid both one and other" means they looked at one another in alarm.
36:17: The officials are checking the source of the document. Whether these are Jeremiah's own dictated words decides how seriously the scroll has to be taken and who can be held responsible for it.
36:18: Ink at this period was made from soot and gum. It sat on the surface of the writing material rather than soaking in, and could be washed or scraped off.
36:19: Hiding was not an overreaction. Jehoiakim had already had a prophet named Uriah hunted down, brought back from Egypt and executed for preaching this same kind of message (Jeremiah 26:20-23).
36:20: "The court" is a courtyard of the palace, where a king would hold audience.
36:22: Palaces had separate winter quarters, enclosed, warmer rooms used during the cold months. The King James "fire on the hearth" means a brazier: a movable pot of burning charcoal set on the floor, not a fireplace built into a wall.
36:23: The King James "leaves" means the columns of writing on the scroll, not pages of a book. A scroll was read by unrolling it column by column. A "penknife" was a scribe's tool, used for trimming reed pens and cutting papyrus.
36:24: Tearing your clothes was the recognized public sign of grief, horror or repentance. When a scroll of the law was read to Jehoiakim's father Josiah, he tore his robes (2 Kings 22:11). The verse is pointing out that no one here did.
36:25: "Made intercession" in the King James simply means pleaded or urged. It carries no religious sense.
36:26: "Hammelech" is not a personal name. The Hebrew phrase ben-hammelek means "son of the king," and could mean an actual prince or be the title of a royal official.
36:29: The king of Babylon is Nebuchadnezzar II. "Cause to cease from thence man and beast" is a stock phrase for total devastation: the land emptied of both people and livestock.
36:30: The throne of David means the royal line ruling in Jerusalem since David, some four centuries earlier. Jehoiakim's son Jehoiachin did in fact reign, but only three months before Babylon deported him; the saying concerns a lasting successor. Being thrown out unburied and exposed to the weather was the deepest dishonor imaginable in this culture, a punishment reaching beyond death.
36:31: "Seed" in the King James means descendants or offspring.
36:32: This closing line records that the second scroll was longer than the first. It is a rare glimpse of how a prophetic collection was assembled and expanded over time.

Read Jeremiah 36