A man who spoke truth to power

²² It was the ninth month and the king was sitting in the winter apartment, with a fire burning in the brazier in front of him. ²³ Whenever Jehudi had read three or four columns of the scroll, the king cut them off with a scribe’s knife and threw them into the brazier, until the entire scroll was burned in the fire. ²⁴ The king and all his attendants who heard all these words showed no fear, nor did they tear their clothes. ²⁵ Even though Elnathan, Delaiah and Gemariah urged the king not to burn the scroll, he would not listen to them…

²⁷ After the king burned the scroll containing the words that Baruch had written at Jeremiah’s dictation, the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah: ²⁸ “Take another scroll and write on it all the words that were on the first scroll, which Jehoiakim king of Judah burned up…” And many similar words were added to them.

Jeremiah 36:22-32

Have you ever wondered how the Bible, as we know it today, came to be? “Well, God inspired it”, you might say, and so indeed he did. But how exactly?

I wouldn’t blame you if it’s something you have never really thought about. After all, many of us were given Bibles either as children or at the time of our conversion. We were told, in effect, “This is the Bible, the word of God – read it, believe it, obey it, enjoy it”: and that’s what we’ve tried to do. For all we knew, it descended directly from heaven, nicely printed and bound, and, as they say, ready to go… “The Holy Bible”. We held God’s word in our hands and have tried to do as we were advised.

But of course it happened nothing like that. Our excuse (not that we need one) is that this is really a matter for experts, for people who know about ancient history and the languages of the Bible, Hebrew and Greek.

But to delve a little into these questions can enrich and deepen our faith, helping us to see that while the Bible is indeed divinely inspired, it is also humanly written. Jeremiah 36 gives us a fascinating glimpse into the process by which one particular part of the Old Testament came to be. (It even has a grimly comical element to it.)

So… why not read the whole chapter right through, then we’ll summarise the main events, and next time we’ll draw from it some lessons which can still benefit us today…

It’s roughly 600 years before Christ, and the little kingdom of Judah – all that’s left of “the people of Israel”, long fallen from their glory days under David and Solomon 400 years earlier – is in serious trouble. They are ruled by a grossly ungodly king, Jehoiakim; the mighty Babylonians have defeated the Egyptians to become the new super-power; and they and their ferocious king, Nebuchadnezzar, are outside the walls of Jerusalem and threatening to destroy God’s holy city.

Jeremiah, God’s stern and uncompromising prophet, is in a difficult position - for God has told him that this is exactly what will happen as a judgment on their falling away from him. Not what you would call a popular message! Not a message King Jehoiakim would be keen to hear!

But Jeremiah has no choice: to use a modern expression, his job is to “speak truth to power”, whatever the consequences might be. (Imagine if a politician in Ukraine today were to advocate total surrender to Russia.)

But Jeremiah has a problem: he has been banned from the temple, his main preaching-place. So how can he get his message across? Answer: God tells him to write his prophecies out on a scroll so that his friend and supporter Baruch can read them in his place. This becomes known to some of the leading men of Jerusalem who, to their credit, take it seriously and decide that the king must be made aware of Jeremiah’s message.

And so we come to the heart of chapter 36…

The  king agrees to listen to the scroll, and a man called Jehudi is given the job of reading it to him. It’s winter time, and King Jehoiakim is sitting in his apartment with fires burning. Every time a section of the scroll is read – well, what better way of keeping the heat nice and cosy than to slice that bit off and toss it into the flames? Suits me, says Jehoiakim. He is completely cynical, as if to say “Why should I bother myself with this crazy fanatic Jeremiah? The word of God, indeed. Pah!”

So what’s to do? Should Jeremiah shrug his shoulders and say “Oh well, at least we did the best we could”. That perhaps would be understandable. But that isn’t the kind of man Jeremiah is. No: he moves to Plan B: he just repeats the whole process, with Baruch again acting as scribe. And this time he adds still more words that God has given him (verse 32), as if to say, “You’re getting it all again - but this time with interest”.

I hope that’s a reasonable summary of this chapter.

Of course, we have no way of knowing how much of what we now call “The Book of the prophet Jeremiah” in our complete Bibles was included in these scrolls (such scrolls weren’t that long, and the final book runs to 52 quite long chapters). But it confirms the idea that the Old Testament prophets were likely to have scribes who remembered and wrote down their messages (Paul, of course, in the New Testament, also had a scribe who pops his head up out of nowhere in Romans 16 - though we don’t know how often he may have used him: I trust you’ve noticed Tertius?). All sorts of other intriguing questions arise. In days before electronic recording, how were the gospel stories remembered? What about a book like Jonah? It’s far more about him than by him, so who wrote it down?

Perhaps we will never know. But the point is worth noticing: suddenly we find ourselves dealing with real, live men and women, not just distant, ancient names which have become revered as “holy” (or the opposite).

But space has run out! Please join me next time as we delve a little deeper…

Thank you, Father, for your servant Jeremiah, who had the courage and faith to speak truth to power, whatever the cost. Thank you for people in our modern world who do the same, whether in terms of religion or politics. Please give me also that same courage and faith. Amen.