Today, I am reading and commenting on  Jeremiah 45-48.

Baruch acted as a scribe and assistant for Jeremiah and we learn here that he desired to accomplish great things.  It appears that around the time that he wrote down Jeremiah’s prophecies to read on the Temple he realized that he would never accomplish the great things of which he dreamed.  Jeremiah tells him that he should not be upset by this because God was about to destroy all of the accomplishments of great men.  Instead Jeremiah told Baruch that God would reward him for his service by allowing him to escape with his life when destruction arrived at each of the places to which he would go.  This prophecy to Baruch always seems slightly out of place to me.  While there is the message for us to be satisfied with the level of accomplishment to which God calls us, there always seems to be a little more to it than that.  It occurred to me today that its presence here may be related to another passage concerning Baruch which always seemed strange: in yesterday’s passage, the leaders of the Israelites after the death of Gedaliah accused Jeremiah of lying at the behest of Baruch when Jeremiah told them God had said for them not to go to Egypt.    I have never read anything that adequately explains why they thought Baruch would benefit from the people staying in Judah, nor why they would think that Jeremiah was influenced by Baruch.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.