Baruch

What Baruch is about

Baruch is presented as the work of the scribe who served as Jeremiah’s secretary and who appears by name in that book. It is set among the exiles in Babylon, and it is short — read in one sitting without difficulty.

It has three distinct parts. The first is a prayer of confession, read aloud by the exiles and sent back to Jerusalem with an offering: they admit that the disaster was deserved, that they did not listen to the prophets, and they ask God to hear them. The tone closely resembles the prayers in Daniel 9 and Nehemiah 9, and its honesty is its strength — there is no attempt to shift blame.

The second is a poem in praise of wisdom, asking where wisdom is to be found and answering that God gave her to Israel in the form of the law. She is the book of the commandments of God… all who hold her fast will live.

The third is a passage of comfort addressed to Jerusalem, personified as a bereaved mother watching her children led away, and told to take off the garment of sorrow and put on the beauty of God’s glory forever, because they are coming back. Its imagery is close to Isaiah 40 to 66, and it is the warmest part of the book.

In Catholic Bibles the Letter of Jeremiah follows as chapter 6; this table lists it separately, as many Bibles do.

Where it sits

Baruch belongs with the literature that grew up around Jeremiah and the exile, and it reflects how later generations of Jews prayed about that catastrophe. Its confession has been used in Christian penitential liturgies for centuries.

It is received as scripture by Catholic and Orthodox Christians. Protestants value it but do not treat it as canonical, and print it among the Apocrypha when they include it.

Why it is worth reading

For its second and third sections in particular. A poem that locates wisdom in God’s own instruction, followed by a promise to a city in mourning, is a combination that repays reading alongside Lamentations — the same grief, at a later stage, with the tears beginning to dry.