The Old Testament · The Prophetic Books · Book 32 of 73
Prophecy in Baruch
A small book in the name of Jeremiah's secretary, written for God's people scattered among the nations. It confesses sin, praises the Wisdom God gave to Israel, and ends by telling Jerusalem to take off her mourning and look to the east. The Church reads it in Advent and at the Easter Vigil.
In progress: 5 passages so far
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The book at a glance
The book presents itself as “the words of the scroll which Baruch, son of Neriah,” wrote in Babylon after Jerusalem was burned (1:1–2), to be read to the exiles and sent home to Jerusalem. Baruch was Jeremiah's secretary and companion (Jeremiah 32:12; 36:4). The NABRE introduction explains that the book is a collection of four different works: a prayer of confession (1:1–3:8), a poem in praise of Wisdom (3:9–4:4), a poem of consolation for Jerusalem (4:5–5:9), and the Letter of Jeremiah (chapter 6), which circulated separately in Greek manuscripts. No certain date can be given; it may have reached its final form in the last two centuries before Christ. Only the Greek and other versions survive, though parts may first have been written in Hebrew.
Baruch is one of the deuterocanonical books. It is not in the Hebrew Bible, and so it is absent from most Protestant Bibles, but it was in the Greek Bible the early Church used, and the Council of Trent (1546) listed it among the canonical books with Jeremiah. The Catholic and Orthodox Churches receive it as inspired Scripture. Its prophecy is mostly promise of return from exile, with one great image the Fathers read of Christ: Wisdom come to live on earth. In NABRE and other Catholic Bibles the Letter of Jeremiah is chapter 6 (6:1–72); some Bibles print it as a separate book with its own verse numbering, so references may differ by a verse.
Key to the labels
How a passage stands
Fulfilled Accomplished in history, above all in Christ.
Unfolding Being worked out now in the life of the Church.
Future Clearly still to come at Christ's return.
Mystery Its meaning or moment is not yet settled.
What kind of passage it is
Prophecy God's word through a prophet, or Christ, about what will come.
Promise A pledge God makes, kept over generations.
Type A person or event that foreshadows Christ or the Church.
Image A picture Scripture returns to and completes at the end.
Apocalypse A vision unveiling history from heaven's side, in symbols.
More on the labels
| Passage | Subject | Standing |
|---|
| 2:30–35 | A heart that listens, an eternal covenant | Fulfilled Unfolding |
| 3:9–4:4 | Hear, Israel: the fountain of wisdom | Fulfilled Unfolding |
| 3:36–38 | She has appeared on earth | Fulfilled |
| 4:36–5:9 | Jerusalem, look to the east | Fulfilled Future |
| 6 | The Letter of Jeremiah: they are not gods | Unfolding |
The passages
“And I will establish for them an eternal covenant: I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”
- Reading
- The exiles' prayer begins, “To the Lord our God belongs justice; to us, people of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem, to be shamefaced, as on this day” (1:15). It ends by recalling what God had promised through Moses: “For I know they will not listen to me, because they are a stiff-necked people. But in the land of their exile they shall have a change of heart” (2:30). “I will give them a heart and ears that listen” (2:31), and then the return and the covenant that will not be broken (2:34–35).
- Fulfilled
- The return from Babylon fulfilled the promise of the land. The promise of a new heart and an eternal covenant echoes Jeremiah's new covenant (Jeremiah 31:31–34), which Christ sealed in his blood (Luke 22:20). See Prophecy in Jeremiah.
- Unfolding
- The prayer itself is a model for the Church: it does not blame God or others, but confesses, and finds hope precisely in the confession. Exile becomes the place of conversion.
“Hear, Israel, the commandments of life: listen, and know prudence!”
- Reading
- The poem asks why Israel is growing old in a foreign land and answers: “You have forsaken the fountain of wisdom!” (3:12). No one can climb up and fetch Wisdom: “Who has gone up to the heavens and taken her, bringing her down from the clouds?” (3:29). Only God knows her, and he has given her to Israel. Then Wisdom is named: “She is the book of the precepts of God, the law that endures forever” (4:1). “Turn, O Jacob, and receive her: walk by her light toward splendor” (4:2). The poem ends in gratitude: “Blessed are we, O Israel; for what pleases God is known to us!” (4:4).
- Fulfilled
- The New Testament speaks of Christ in the language of Wisdom: he is “the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:24). St. Paul's question, “Who will go up into heaven?” (Romans 10:6–8), echoes the same tradition of Deuteronomy 30:12 that this poem takes up, and answers it: the word is near, in Christ.
- Unfolding
- The Church reads this poem as the sixth reading of the Easter Vigil, on the night when the newly baptized are brought into the light. Each year it calls the Church back to the fountain.
“Thus she has appeared on earth, is at home with mortals.”
- Reading
- “Such is our God; no other is to be compared to him” (3:36). He “has given her to Jacob, his servant, to Israel, his beloved” (3:37), and so Wisdom has come down to live among human beings. The NABRE note compares Sirach 24:8, where Wisdom pitches her tent in Israel, and Proverbs 8:31, where she delights in the human race. In its first sense the verse speaks of God's Wisdom given in the Law.
- Fulfilled
- The Fathers heard more. Their Greek and Latin Bibles could be read of God himself appearing on earth and living among men, and they took it as a prophecy of the Incarnation: “the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14). St. Augustine quotes the passage among the prophecies of Christ, noting that some ascribe it to Baruch and more to Jeremiah (City of God 18.33); John Cassian cites it in the same way (On the Incarnation 4.9). This is the Fathers' Christian reading, building on the literal sense of Wisdom given to Israel; it is the reason the verse was cherished in the early Church.
“Jerusalem, take off your robe of mourning and misery; put on forever the splendor of glory from God.”
- Reading
- “Look to the east, Jerusalem; see the joy that comes to you from God!” (4:36). The city that Lamentations saw as a widow (Lamentations 1:1) is told to dress for a feast: “Wrapped in the mantle of justice from God, place on your head the diadem of the glory of the Eternal One” (5:2). Her children come home “gathered from east to west at the word of the Holy One” (5:5), on a road God himself levels: “every lofty mountain and the age-old hills be made low, … that Israel may advance securely in the glory of God” (5:7). The poem closes: “For God is leading Israel in joy by the light of his glory, with the mercy and justice that are his” (5:9).
- Fulfilled
- The Church reads 5:1–9 on the Second Sunday of Advent (Year C), together with John the Baptist's preaching from Isaiah: “Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill shall be made low” (Luke 3:5). The road God levels for the exiles becomes the way prepared for Christ, the light who comes from the east.
- Future
- The clothing of Jerusalem in glory is completed at the end, in “the holy city, a new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (Revelation 21:2).
“Know, therefore, that they are not gods; do not fear them.” (6:22)
- Reading
- The Letter of Jeremiah is a warning to the exiles before they reach Babylon: “And now in Babylon you will see gods of silver and gold and wood, carried shoulder high, to cast fear upon the nations” (6:3). It mocks the idols with care: “Their tongues are smoothed by woodworkers; they are covered with gold and silver—but they are frauds, and cannot speak” (6:7). Ten times a refrain returns, that they are not gods and are not to be feared. It is not the same letter as Jeremiah 29, though it imitates it, and in some Bibles it is printed as a separate book with slightly different verse numbers.
- Unfolding
- Revelation uses the same argument when it describes those who “did not repent of the works of their hands, to give up the worship of demons and idols made from gold, silver, bronze, stone, and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk” (Revelation 9:20; compare Psalm 115:4–7). The Catechism teaches that idolatry is not only the worship of images: it is divinizing what is not God, whether power, pleasure, money or the state (CCC 2113). The letter's last line still holds: “Better the just who has no idols; such shall be far from disgrace!” (6:72).
Still to come on this pageFurther passages to add: the confession of the exiles and the Book of Daniel's similar prayer (1:15–3:8; compare
Daniel 9:4–19), Jerusalem as a mother who sends her children away and receives them back (4:5–35), and “seven generations” of exile in the Letter of Jeremiah (6:2), which the NABRE note connects with Jeremiah's seventy years (
Jeremiah 29:10).
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