Bible Commentaries

XLV.

(1) The word that Jeremiah the prophet spake unto Baruch . . .—The chapter is obviously misplaced as far as chronological order is concerned. and ought to follow on Jeremiah 35, 36. It gives us a glimpse of singular interest into the character of the prophet’s helper. He was discouraged and desponding, and yet the very despondency was that of an ambitious temperament eager to take the lead. His master was in prison. Neither king nor nobles listened to him. He had, it may be, drawn for himself an ideal picture of a successful work, in which he himself should be a chief agent. (See Note on Jeremiah 43:3.) “Grief was added to his sighing, and he found no rest.” And now all seemed failure. The prophet had passed through such moods himself (Jeremiah 15:10-21; Jeremiah 20:7-18), and knew, when they found utterance in words that were the very echo of his own, how to deal with them. The scribe must accept the doom that fell on him as on others. He must not hope to pass unscathed, still less to attain the “great things” which he had imagined for himself. It was enough that his life was given him “as a prey” (Jeremiah 21:9; Jeremiah 39:18), as spoil rescued from the spoiler. What his future was to be was not revealed unto him, but the closing words pointed to a life of wandering and exile; and Baruch was, we know, among those who went down to Egypt (Jeremiah 43:6), and had probably been for some years at Babylon (Baruch 1:1). According to one tradition he died in Egypt (Jerome, Comm. in Isaiah 30); another represents him as having returned to Babylon after his master’s death, and ending his life there. The apocryphal book that bears his name testifies to the reverence felt for him by a later generation. It is not without interest to note the general parallelism of the words in which Elisha rebuked the covetousness of Gehazi (2 Kings 5:26) and those with which our Lord met the ambitious request of the sons of Zebedee (Matthew 20:20-23).