HarperCollins Study Bible

by Harold W. Attridge

  51.13 The prayer for wisdom may allude to Solomon’s request (1 Kings 3.7–9); cf. Sir 51.20; Wis 7.7; 8.21; 9.1–12.

  51.23 The invitation is reminiscent of wisdom. Cf. 14.20–27; Prov 9.1–6. It is difficult to know whether the house of instruction is merely a poetic figure or whether it refers to a school. Given the form and content of Ben Sira’s book of instruction, some formal setting for educational purposes has to be supposed.

  51.26 For wisdom’s yoke, see 6.23–31. For the idea that her instruction is close by, cf. Deut 30.11–14.

  BARUCH

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  Authorship

  THE NARRATIVE INTRODUCTION presents the book of Baruch as a letter sent by Baruch, the secretary and friend of Jeremiah, from exile in Babylon to the priests and people of Jerusalem in the early sixth century BCE. According to Jer 43.1–7, however, in 582 BCE Jeremiah and Baruch were taken from Jerusalem to Egypt, where they presumably remained until they died. A later tradition, reflected in Baruch and other Jewish sources (Seder Olam Rabbah 26; Midrash Rabbah Song 5.5; Babylonian Talmud Megilla 16b), assumes that Baruch went to Babylon. These sources are full of historical inaccuracies and belong to the realm of legend rather than history. It was a relatively common practice during the late Second Temple period to compose edifying works that expanded the biblical tradition (e.g., Prayer of Manasseh, Jubilees, Ps.-Philo, Biblical Antiquities), and it is within this context that Baruch should be situated.

  Content

  BARUCH CONSISTS OF THREE originally independent compositions, a prose prayer, a wisdom poem, and a poem of consolation, that have been joined together and given a narrative introduction. The narrative introduction (1.1–14) instructs the recipients to read the contents as a confessional liturgy “on the days of the festivals and at appointed seasons” (1.14). It is followed by a prose prayer (1.15–3.8) consisting of a preliminary confession (1.15–2.10) and the prayer itself (2.11–3.8). The confession and prayer are a pastiche of quotations from Daniel and Jeremiah; the relationship between Bar 1.15–2.19 and Dan 9.4–19 is especially close. The wisdom poem (3.9–4.4) speaks of the elusiveness of wisdom but also identifies wisdom with the Torah (“the book of the commandments of God,” 4.1) as God’s gift to Israel. Like the prose prayer, the wisdom poem is a pastiche of biblical phrases. Although no single text predominates, echoes of Deut 30; Job 28; and Sir 24 are easily identifiable. The last section of the book is a poem of consolation (4.5–5.9) that is strongly influenced by Isa 40–66. The poem begins with words of encouragement to the remnant of Israel (4.5–9a) and continues with an address of personified Zion to her neighbors (4.9b–16) and to her children (4.17–29). The poem concludes with words of encouragement to Zion (4.30–5.9), who will see the return of her children. The last part of the poem, 4.36–5.9, closely resembles the noncanonical Psalms of Solomon 11.1–7. Opinion is divided, however, as to whether Psalms of Solomon is dependent on Baruch or whether both draw on an earlier poem of restoration.

  The distinctiveness of the sections is evident not only in their different styles and in the different biblical texts on which they draw but also in the terms used for God. In the prose introduction and prayer God is referred to most often as “Lord,” in the wisdom poem as “God,” and in the poem of consolation as “the Everlasting.”

  Language, Place, and Date of Composition

  IT IS NOW GENERALLY AGREED that all of the parts of Baruch were originally composed in He brew, although no Hebrew text now exists. Of the translations, the Greek text is the most important. Versions in Syriac, Latin, Coptic, Ethiopic, Arabic, and Armenian are also known. Because the book was composed in Hebrew, Palestine is the most likely place of origin.

  The dates of composition of the originally independent sections of Baruch are difficult to establish. Historical inaccuracies in the introduction suggest a time considerably later than the Babylonian exile. The dependence of the prose prayer on Dan 9 might point to a date after 165 BCE, the date of Daniel, but it is possible that the prayer in Dan 9 is an earlier composition than Daniel as a whole. If the wisdom poem does in fact allude to Sir 24, then a date after 180 BCE is indicated for that section. There are few clues to the date of the poem of consolation. Most scholars favor a date between 200 and 60 BCE for the compilation of the book as a whole. [CAROL A. NEWSOM]

  BARUCH 1

  Baruch and the Jews in Babylon

  1These are the words of the book that Baruch son of Neriah son of Mahseiah son of Zedekiah son of Hasadiah son of Hilkiah wrote in Babylon, 2in the fifth year, on the seventh day of the month, at the time when the Chaldeans took Jerusalem and burned it with fire.

  3Baruch read the words of this book to Jeconiah son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, and to all the people who came to hear the book, 4and to the nobles and the princes, and to the elders, and to all the people, small and great, all who lived in Babylon by the river Sud.

  5Then they wept, and fasted, and prayed before the Lord; 6they collected as much money as each could give, 7and sent it to Jerusalem to the high priesta Jehoiakim son of Hilkiah son of Shallum, and to the priests, and to all the people who were present with him in Jerusalem. 8At the same time, on the tenth day of Sivan, Baruchb took the vessels of the house of the Lord, which had been carried away from the temple, to return them to the land of Judah—the silver vessels that Zedekiah son of Josiah, king of Judah, had made, 9after King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon had carried away from Jerusalem Jeconiah and the princes and the prisoners and the nobles and the people of the land, and brought them to Babylon.

  A Letter to Jerusalem

  10They said: Here we send you money; so buy with the money burnt offerings and sin offerings and incense, and prepare a grain offering, and offer them on the altar of the Lord our God; 11and pray for the life of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, and for the life of his son Belshazzar, so that their days on earth may be like the days of heaven. 12The Lord will give us strength, and light to our eyes; we shall live under the protectionc of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, and under the protection of his son Belshazzar, and we shall serve them many days and find favor in their sight. 13Pray also for us to the Lord our God, for we have sinned against the Lord our God, and to this day the anger of the Lord and his wrath have not turned away from us. 14And you shall read aloud this scroll that we are sending you, to make your confession in the house of the Lord on the days of the festivals and at appointed seasons.

  Confession of Sins

  15And you shall say: The Lord our God is in the right, but there is open shame on us today, on the people of Judah, on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, 16and on our kings, our rulers, our priests, our prophets, and our ancestors, 17because we have sinned before the Lord. 18We have disobeyed him, and have not heeded the voice of the Lord our God, to walk in the statutes of the Lord that he set before us. 19From the time when the Lord brought our ancestors out of the land of Egypt until today, we have been disobedient to the Lord our God, and we have been negligent, in not heeding his voice. 20So to this day there have clung to us the calamities and the curse that the Lord declared through his servant Moses at the time when he brought our ancestors out of the land of Egypt to give to us a land flowing with milk and honey. 21We did not listen to the voice of the Lord our God in all the words of the prophets whom he sent to us, 22but all of us followed the intent of our own wicked hearts by serving other gods and doing what is evil in the sight of the Lord our God.

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  a Gk the priest

  b Gk he

  c Gk in the shadow

  1.1–9 The first part of the narrative introduction, giving the circumstances of the letter.

  1.1 Baruch son of…Hilkiah. Only Baruch’s father and grandfather are named in the genealogy in Jer 32.12.

  1.2 Whether the fifth year is calculated from the exile of 597 BCE (see 2 Kings 24.10–17) or of 586 BCE (see 2 Kings 25.8–12) is not stated. The reference to the burning of Jerusalem suggests the latter. Curiously, the d
ate formula omits the name of the month (but see v. 8). 2 Kings 25.8 states that Nebuzaradan burned Jerusalem “in the fifth month, on the seventh day of the month.” For penitential activity in Palestine on the anniversary of the destruction, see Zech 7.3–5.

  1.3 Jeconiah is one of the names of Jehoiachin, the last king of Judah, who was exiled in 597 BCE.

  1.4 The river Sud is otherwise unknown. Ezekiel also locates the community of exiles to which he belongs in relation to a river, the Chebar (Ezek 1.1).

  1.5 The favorable reception given to Baruch’s book by the exiled king and all the assembled people contrasts with the hostility Baruch received from Jeconiah’s father, King Jehoiakim, when he read the scroll dictated by Jeremiah in 604 BCE (Jer 36).

  1.6–9 The account of a collection for Jerusalem and the return of silver vessels is apparently modeled on Ezra 1, where a similar collection accompanies the return of gold and silver vessels by the Persian king Cyrus in 538 BCE.

  1.7 No high priest by the name of Jehoiakim appears in the list of 1 Chr 6.13–15.

  1.8–9 Sivan, the third month of the Jewish year (May/June). 2 Kings does not mention the making of silver vessels by Zedekiah to replace those taken by Nebuchadnezzar in the exile of 597 BCE (cf. 2 Kings 25.13–16).

  1.10–14 The letter to the community in Jerusalem includes instructions for the use of the collection and requests for prayer and the public reading of the scroll.

  1.10 The text assumes the continuation of sacrifices in Jerusalem. This does not necessarily imply a date before 586 BCE; see Jer 41.5.

  1.11 Belshazzar was not the son of Nebuchadnezzar but of Nabonidus. Here the author of Baruch is influenced by Dan 5, which also erroneously calls Belshazzar Nebuchadnezzar’s son. Prayer was offered for the Persian king and his children according to Ezra 6.10.

  1.15–2.10 In preparation for prayer, the people confess their guilt before God. The passage is modeled closely on Dan 9.7–14, with significant influence also from Deuteronomy, Jeremiah, and the prayer in Neh 9.

  1.15 Dan 9.7.

  1.16–17 See Dan 9.8; Neh 9.33–34; Jer 32.32.

  1.18 Dan 9.9–10; see Neh 9.26.

  1.19 See Deut 9.7; Jer 7.25.

  1.20 See Dan 9.11, 13; Deut 29.20; Jer 11.4–5. For the curse, see Lev 26.14–39; Deut 28.15–68.

  1.21 Dan 9.10; see Deut 9.23; 28.15; Jer 26.5.

  1.22 See Jer 7.24.

  BARUCH 2

  1So the Lord carried out the threat he spoke against us: against our judges who ruled Israel, and against our kings and our rulers and the people of Israel and Judah. 2Under the whole heaven there has not been done the like of what he has done in Jerusalem, in accordance with the threats that werea written in the law of Moses. 3Some of us ate the flesh of their sons and others the flesh of their daughters. 4He made them subject to all the kingdoms around us, to be an object of scorn and a desolation among all the surrounding peoples, where the Lord has scattered them. 5They were brought down and not raised up, because our nationb sinned against the Lord our God, in not heeding his voice.

  6The Lord our God is in the right, but there is open shame on us and our ancestors this very day. 7All those calamities with which the Lord threatened us have come upon us. 8Yet we have not entreated the favor of the Lord by turning away, each of us, from the thoughts of our wicked hearts. 9And the Lord has kept the calamities ready, and the Lord has brought them upon us, for the Lord is just in all the works that he has commanded us to do. 10Yet we have not obeyed his voice, to walk in the statutes of the Lord that he set before us.

  Prayer for Deliverance

  11And now, O Lord God of Israel, who brought your people out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand and with signs and wonders and with great power and outstretched arm, and made yourself a name that continues to this day, 12we have sinned, we have been ungodly, we have done wrong, O Lord our God, against all your ordinances. 13Let your anger turn away from us, for we are left, few in number, among the nations where you have scattered us. 14Hear, O Lord, our prayer and our supplication, and for your own sake deliver us, and grant us favor in the sight of those who have carried us into exile; 15so that all the earth may know that you are the Lord our God, for Israel and his descendants are called by your name.

  16O Lord, look down from your holy dwelling, and consider us. Incline your ear, O Lord, and hear; 17open your eyes, O Lord, and see, for the dead who are in Hades, whose spirit has been taken from their bodies, will not ascribe glory or justice to the Lord; 18but the person who is deeply grieved, who walks bowed and feeble, with failing eyes and famished soul, will declare your glory and righteousness, O Lord.

  19For it is not because of any righteous deeds of our ancestors or our kings that we bring before you our prayer for mercy, O Lord our God. 20For you have sent your anger and your wrath upon us, as you declared by your servants the prophets, saying: 21Thus says the Lord: Bend your shoulders and serve the king of Babylon, and you will remain in the land that I gave to your ancestors. 22But if you will not obey the voice of the Lord and will not serve the king of Babylon, 23I will make to cease from the towns of Judah and from the region around Jerusalem the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, and the whole land will be a desolation without inhabitants.

  24But we did not obey your voice, to serve the king of Babylon; and you have carried out your threats, which you spoke by your servants the prophets, that the bones of our kings and the bones of our ancestors would be brought out of their resting place; 25and indeed they have been thrown out to the heat of day and the frost of night. They perished in great misery, by famine and sword and pestilence. 26And the house that is called by your name you have made as it is today, because of the wickedness of the house of Israel and the house of Judah.

  God’s Promise Recalled

  27Yet you have dealt with us, O Lord our God, in all your kindness and in all your great compassion, 28as you spoke by your servant Moses on the day when you commanded him to write your law in the presence of the people of Israel, saying, 29“If you will not obey my voice, this very great multitude will surely turn into a small number among the nations, where I will scatter them. 30For I know that they will not obey me, for they are a stiff-necked people. But in the land of their exile they will come to themselves 31and know that I am the Lord their God. I will give them a heart that obeys and ears that hear; 32they will praise me in the land of their exile, and will remember my name 33and turn from their stubbornness and their wicked deeds; for they will remember the ways of their ancestors, who sinned before the Lord. 34I will bring them again into the land that I swore to give to their ancestors, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and they will rule over it; and I will increase them, and they will not be diminished. 35I will make an everlasting covenant with them to be their God and they shall be my people; and I will never again remove my people Israel from the land that I have given them.”

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  a Gk in accordance with what is

  b Gk because we

  2.1–2 Dan 9.12–13.

  2.3 Cannibalism of one’s own children in time of siege is mentioned as one of the horrors of war in Lev 26.29; Deut 28.53; 2 Kings 6.24–31; Jer 19.9; Lam 2.20; 4.10.

  2.4 Jer 29.18.

  2.5 See Deut 28.13; Dan 9.8, 11.

  2.6 Dan 9.7.

  2.7 Dan 9.12.

  2.8 Dan 9.13; see Jer 7.24.

  2.9 See Dan 9.14.

  2.10 Dan 9.10.

  2.11–35 Recalling God’s activity in the exodus and confessing their sin, the people appeal to God’s mercy.

  2.11–18 These verses closely follow Dan 9.15–19.

  2.11–12 See Dan 9.15; Jer 32.20–21.

  2.13 See Dan 9.16; Deut 4.27; Jer 42.2.

  2.14–15 See 2 Kings 19.19; Dan 9.16–17; See also Gen 39.21.

  2.16 Dan 9.18; see Deut 26.15.

  2.17–18 See 2 Kings 19.16; Dan 9.18. For the idea that the dead cannot praise God,
see Pss 30.9; 88.10–12; 115.17; Isa 38.18.

  2.19–20 Dan 9.6, 18.

  2.21–23 Not an exact quotation from Jeremiah but a pastiche of Jer 7.34; 27.9, 12; 48.9.

  2.24–26 The threats are adapted from Jer 8.1; 11.17; 16.4; 32.36; 36.30; 44.6.

  2.29–35 The quotation attributed to Moses is not attested in the Pentateuch but is largely a pastiche of phrases from Jeremiah, with some echoes of Deuteronomy. Cf. Deut 28.62; Jer 24.7, 9; 25.5; 29.6; 30.3; 31.33; 32.40. Cf. also Lev 26.42–45; Deut 30.1–5.

  BARUCH 3

  1O Lord Almighty, God of Israel, the soul in anguish and the wearied spirit cry out to you. 2Hear, O Lord, and have mercy, for we have sinned before you. 3For you are enthroned forever, and we are perishing forever. 4O Lord Almighty, God of Israel, hear now the prayer of the peoplea of Israel, the children of those who sinned before you, who did not heed the voice of the Lord their God, so that calamities have clung to us. 5Do not remember the iniquities of our ancestors, but in this crisis remember your power and your name. 6For you are the Lord our God, and it is you, O Lord, whom we will praise. 7For you have put the fear of you in our hearts so that we would call upon your name; and we will praise you in our exile, for we have put away from our hearts all the iniquity of our ancestors who sinned against you. 8See, we are today in our exile where you have scattered us, to be reproached and cursed and punished for all the iniquities of our ancestors, who forsook the Lord our God.