Baruch 2
A community in Babylon, far from a ruined Jerusalem, kneels to confess. Baruch 2 is the heart of that prayer, and it opens with no alibi. Everything God warned through Moses has come to pass, and the exiles name the reason without flinching: we have sinned against the LORD our God, and have not been obedient unto his voice (v. 5). No blaming Babylon. To God belongs righteousness; to them, open shame (v. 6). God is in the right; they are in the wrong.2
From there the prayer turns. They ask to be delivered for thine own sake, not for any righteousness of their own (vv. 14, 19). Then God answers, and His answer outruns the asking: I will give them an heart, and ears to hear (v. 31), and an everlasting covenant, to be their God (v. 35). The book stands differently as Scripture across the Christian world; it is read here as an ancient witness whose themes run through the rest of the Bible.
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Baruch 2:1-12God Hath Made Good His Word · The Confession Without an Alibi
1Therefore the LORD hath made good his word, which he pronounced against us, and against our judges that judged Israel, and against our kings, and against our princes, and against the men of Israel and Juda, 2To bring upon us great plagues, such as never happened under the whole heaven, as it came to pass in Jerusalem, according to the things that were written in the law of Moses; 3That a man should eat the flesh of his own son, and the flesh of his own daughter. 4Moreover he hath delivered them to be in subjection to all the kingdoms that are round about us, to be as a reproach and desolation among all the people round about, where the LORD hath scattered them. 5Thus we were cast down, and not exalted, because we have sinned against the LORD our God, and have not been obedient unto his voice. 6To the LORD our God appertaineth righteousness: but unto us and to our fathers open shame, as appeareth this day. 7For all these plagues are come upon us, which the LORD hath pronounced against us. 8Yet have we not prayed before the LORD, that we might turn every one from the imaginations of his wicked heart. 9Wherefore the LORD watched over us for evil, and the LORD hath brought it upon us: for the LORD is righteous in all his works which he hath commanded us. 10Yet we have not hearkened unto his voice, to walk in the commandments of the LORD, that he hath set before us. 11And now, O LORD God of Israel, that hast brought thy people out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand, and high arm, and with signs, and with wonders, and with great power, and hast gotten thyself a name, as appeareth this day: 12O LORD our God, we have sinned, we have done ungodly, we have dealt unrighteously in all thine ordinances.
The prayer opens by handing God the verdict. Everything He had warned, through Moses, against this people and its leaders has come true, including horrors the narrator names and then will not linger over (vv. 2-3). The exile is not bad luck or imperial cruelty in a vacuum; it is, the people insist, the keeping of a promise, according to the things that were written in the law of Moses. And then comes the sentence that anchors the whole chapter: To the LORD our God appertaineth righteousness: but unto us and to our fathers open shame, as appeareth this day (v. 6). The righteousness is God's; the shame is theirs. There is no hedging in it, no “but surely we did not deserve this,” no attempt to split the blame with Babylon. They place God in the right and themselves in the wrong, openly, “as appeareth this day” - in front of everyone, with the ruin all around them as evidence. It is one of the cleanest confessions in any prayer of Scripture, and everything that follows rests on it.2
The confession sharpens as it goes, because the people name not only the sin that brought the exile but the sin they kept committing inside it. Yet have we not prayed before the LORD, that we might turn every one from the imaginations of his wicked heart (v. 8). Even under judgment - even with the lesson written in fire all around them - they had not turned. The phrase the imaginations of his wicked heart is striking: they do not locate the problem only in their actions but in the heart that devises them, the inner factory of crooked desire. Twice more the indictment lands - we have not hearkened unto his voice, to walk in the commandments (v. 10); we have sinned, we have done ungodly, we have dealt unrighteously in all thine ordinances (v. 12). Notice that the prayer pauses, in verse 11, to remember who this God is: the One who brought thy people out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand. The confession is not made to a stranger or a tyrant but to the God who has already proven Himself a deliverer. They are not bargaining with a power that might be persuaded; they are coming home, ashamed, to a God they know has rescued before.
Baruch 2:13-26Deliver Us for Thine Own Sake · A Plea Resting on Mercy, Not Merit
13Let thy wrath turn from us: for we are but a few left among the heathen, where thou hast scattered us. 14Hear our prayers, O LORD, and our petitions, and deliver us for thine own sake, and give us favour in the sight of them which have led us away: 15That all the earth may know that thou art the LORD our God, because Israel and his posterity is called by thy name. 16O LORD, look down from thine holy house, and consider us: bow down thine ear, O LORD, to hear us. 17Open thine eyes, and behold; for the dead that are in the graves, whose souls are taken from their bodies, will give unto the LORD neither praise nor righteousness: 18But the soul that is greatly vexed, which goeth stooping and feeble, and the eyes that fail, and the hungry soul, will give thee praise and righteousness, O LORD. 19Therefore we do not make our humble supplication before thee, O LORD our God, for the righteousness of our fathers, and of our kings. 20For thou hast sent out thy wrath and indignation upon us, as thou hast spoken by thy servants the prophets, saying, 21Thus saith the LORD, Bow down your shoulders to serve the king of Babylon: so shall ye remain in the land that I gave unto your fathers. 22But if ye will not hear the voice of the LORD, to serve the king of Babylon, 23I will cause to cease out of the cities of Juda, and from without Jerusalem, the voice of mirth, and the voice of joy, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride: and the whole land shall be desolate of inhabitants. 24But we would not hearken unto thy voice, to serve the king of Babylon: therefore hast thou made good the words that thou spakest by thy servants the prophets, namely, that the bones of our kings, and the bones of our fathers, should be taken out of their places. 25And, lo, they are cast out to the heat of the day, and to the frost of the night, and they died in great miseries by famine, by sword, and by pestilence. 26And the house which is called by thy name hast thou laid waste, as it is to be seen this day, for the wickedness of the house of Israel and the house of Juda.
Having confessed, the people now ask - and the ground they ask on is the heart of this section. They do not say, “deliver us because we have suffered enough,” or “because our ancestors were faithful.” They say the opposite: deliver us for thine own sake (v. 14), so that all the earth may know that thou art the LORD our God (v. 15) - the appeal is to God's name and reputation, not their record. And then they make it explicit in a sentence easy to miss: we do not make our humble supplication before thee... for the righteousness of our fathers, and of our kings (v. 19). They have just named those fathers and kings as part of the problem (v. 1); there is no righteousness there to lean on. So the whole weight of the request is shifted off themselves and onto God - His mercy, His name, His covenant. This is the second great move of mature prayer, and it follows naturally from the first: once you have honestly admitted you have no case, you stop pleading your case and start pleading His character. It is a kind of freedom. The prayer has nothing left to protect and nothing left to prove.1
Verses 17-18 make an unusual and moving argument. The dead that are in the graves, whose souls are taken from their bodies, will give unto the LORD neither praise nor righteousness - but the soul that is greatly vexed, which goeth stooping and feeble, and the eyes that fail, and the hungry soul, will give thee praise and righteousness. The logic is almost tender: spare us, because it is the living who can still worship You. The point is not a settled doctrine of what does or does not happen beyond death - the prayer is not teaching about the grave so much as pressing a case for mercy - but a plea grounded in the value of a life that can still turn back. The exiles describe themselves with painful precision: bent over, weak, eyes failing, hungry. They are not pretending to be strong supplicants; they are the “greatly vexed,” and they offer that very weakness as the reason God should keep them - a worn-down soul is still a soul that can lift praise, and that is worth something to God. Verses 20-26 then circle back to the confession one more time, rehearsing how the prophets' warnings about serving Babylon went unheeded until the land was laid desolate and even the temple, the house which is called by thy name, was laid waste (v. 26). The plea is sandwiched in honesty: a cry for mercy, framed on both sides by the admission that the disaster was deserved.
Baruch 2:27-35I Will Give Them an Heart · The Everlasting Covenant
27O LORD our God, thou hast dealt with us after all thy goodness, and according to all that great mercy of thine, 28As thou spakest by thy servant Moses in the day when thou didst command him to write thy law before the children of Israel, saying, 29If ye will not hear my voice, surely this very great multitude shall be turned into a small number among the nations, where I will scatter them. 30For I knew that they would not hear me, because it is a stiffnecked people: but in the land of their captivities they shall remember themselves, 31And shall know that I am the LORD their God: for I will give them an heart, and ears to hear: 32And they shall praise me in the land of their captivity, and think upon my name, 33And return from their stiff neck, and from their wicked deeds: for they shall remember the way of their fathers, which sinned before the LORD. 34And I will bring them again into the land which I promised with an oath unto their fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and they shall be lords of it: and I will increase them, and they shall not be diminished. 35And I will make an everlasting covenant with them to be their God, and they shall be my people: and I will no more drive my people of Israel out of the land that I have given them.
The prayer now turns from the people's words to God's, and the tone changes entirely. Up to here the exiles have been speaking to God; now they recall what God spoke to them, through Moses (v. 28). And God's words contain a startling honesty of their own: I knew that they would not hear me, because it is a stiffnecked people (v. 30). The failure did not catch God off guard. He saw the rebellion coming and made a promise that reaches past it - that in the land of their captivities they shall remember themselves (v. 30). That phrase, “remember themselves,” is the hinge. Exile, in this telling, is not only punishment; it is the place where a stiff-necked people finally comes to its senses. Stripped of the land, the temple, the wealth they had chased instead of God, they at last remember - who they are, whose they are, what they abandoned. The judgment, severe as it is, turns out to be bent toward restoration. God scatters them not to be rid of them but so that, in the far country, they will come awake.
The promises stack up quickly in verses 31-35, and they are all God's doing, not the people's. Watch the verbs: I will give them an heart; I will bring them again into the land; I will increase them; I will make an everlasting covenant; I will no more drive my people... out. The people's part is described too - they shall know, praise, think upon my name, return from their stiff neck (vv. 31-33) - but notice the order. The turning of the people in verse 33 follows the gift of verse 31. They return from their stubbornness because God has given them a heart and ears to hear. The new obedience is not the price of the new heart; it is the fruit of it. This is the deepest answer the chapter gives to the problem it opened with. In verse 8 the trouble was located in the imaginations of his wicked heart - the inner factory of crookedness that even exile had not fixed. Here is the cure: not a sterner law or a harder lesson, but a heart God Himself supplies. The people who could not hear are given ears to hear; the people who could not turn are given the heart that turns.3
Further study
- The text of Baruch 2 in an English translation with links into the wider library - useful for tracing the confession that God's judgment is just (vv. 5-6), the plea for mercy for God's own sake (vv. 13-19), and the promise of a new heart and an everlasting covenant (vv. 31-35). (The deep-link to this lesser-printed book may not always resolve; it is included as the standard scholarly reference.)
- Baruch · introduction, dating, and full textEarly Jewish WritingsBackground on the book of Baruch - its connection to Jeremiah and the Babylonian exile, its survival in Greek, its likely composition, and its penitential-prayer form - with scholarly notes that help place the confession and covenant-promise of chapter 2 (vv. 1-35) in its own historical world.
- A survey of the book of Baruch - its contents, structure, language, authorship, and its varied standing across the Christian world (received as Scripture by some, printed in the Apocrypha of the King James Bible, weighed differently by others) - useful for understanding how chapter 2's confession and everlasting-covenant promise (vv. 27-35) sit within the book as a whole.
Where this echoes in Scripture
God Hath Made Good His Word · The Confession Without an Alibi
- 1 John 1:9If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.The open confession of verses 5-12 - the honesty on which God's faithful forgiveness acts.
- Psalm 51:17The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.The posture of the whole prayer (vv. 6, 12) - the contrite heart God receives rather than refuses.
- Luke 18:13-14God be merciful to me a sinner... this man went down to his house justified.The tax collector stands where the exiles stand (v. 6) - no merit pleaded, the shame owned, mercy given.
- Daniel 9:7O Lord, righteousness belongeth unto thee, but unto us confusion of faces, as at this day.Almost the exact words of verse 6 - the same exile-prayer placing God in the right and the people in the wrong.
- Nehemiah 9:33thou art just in all that is brought upon us; for thou hast done right, but we have done wickedly.The same verdict the exiles reach (vv. 6, 9) - God just, the people guilty, spoken plainly.
Deliver Us for Thine Own Sake · A Plea Resting on Mercy, Not Merit
- Luke 1:54-55He hath holpen his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy; as he spake to our fathers.The answer to the plea of verse 14 - God delivering His people in remembrance of His mercy, not their merit.
- Daniel 9:18-19we do not present our supplications before thee for our righteousnesses, but for thy great mercies... for thine own sake, O my God.Almost word-for-word the plea of verses 14 and 19 - mercy asked for God's sake, not the petitioner's righteousness.
- Titus 3:5Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us.The ground the exiles ask on (v. 19) - salvation resting on God's mercy rather than human righteousness.
- Psalm 103:8The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy.The character the exiles appeal to in verse 14 - mercy as simply who God is.
- Psalm 79:8-9O remember not against us former iniquities... help us, O God of our salvation... for thy name's sake.The same exile cry behind verses 13-15 - deliverance sought for the sake of God's own name.
- Ezekiel 36:22I do not this for your sakes, O house of Israel, but for mine holy name's sake.God answering the very logic of verse 14 - He acts for His own name, which is why the plea can hope.
I Will Give Them an Heart · The Everlasting Covenant
- Jeremiah 31:33I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.The new-covenant promise behind verses 31 and 35 - God writing on the heart what stone could not hold.
- Ezekiel 36:26-27A new heart also will I give you... and I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes.The exact gift of verse 31 - a heart and a spirit God supplies, so the obedience can follow.
- 2 Corinthians 3:6who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit.The covenant of verse 35 come to its fullness - written by the Spirit on the heart, not only in law.
- 2 Corinthians 3:3written not with ink... not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.The new heart of verse 31 - the law inscribed by the Spirit where stone could not hold it.
- Hebrews 8:10I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people.The everlasting covenant of verse 35 - the same “their God / my people” refrain named as fulfilled.
- 1 Peter 2:10Which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God.The promise “they shall be my people” (v. 35) carried to those gathered in by mercy.