Jeremiah 45
Big idea: Five verses for the man who wrote the book down, dated twenty years before the chapters around it. He is exhausted and says so, and the answer promises him nothing except that he will not be killed.
The date — the fourth year of Jehoiakim — places this at chapter 36, the day the first scroll was dictated.
45:1–5 — I will give your life to you as a prize
The date is given precisely and it belongs to another part of the book: the word that Jeremiah spoke to Baruch son of Neriah when he wrote these words in a book at the mouth of Jeremiah, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim. That is chapter 36 — the day the first scroll was dictated, roughly twenty years before the events on either side of this chapter. It has been placed here, at the end of the narrative section, as a closing note about the man who produced it.
1 The message that Jeremiah the prophet spoke to Baruch the son of Neriah, when he wrote these words in a book at the mouth of Jeremiah, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, saying, 2 “Yahweh, the God of Israel, says to you, Baruch: 3 ‘You said, “Woe is me now! For Yahweh has added sorrow to my pain! I am weary with my groaning, and I find no rest.”’ 4 “You shall tell him, Yahweh says: ‘Behold, that which I have built, I will break down, and that which I have planted I will pluck up; and this in the whole land. 5 Do you seek great things for yourself? Don’t seek them; for, behold, I will bring evil on all flesh,’ says Yahweh, ‘but I will let you escape with your life wherever you go.’”
Scripture text: World English Bible (public domain).