Baruch 5

The poem opens with a wardrobe, and the choice of clothes is the whole message. Jerusalem has been wearing “the garment of thy mourning and affliction” (v. 1) - the dark, rough dress of grief, the visible sign worn by a city that has buried its dead and watched its children marched away. In the language of the Scriptures, what you put on your body announces the state of your soul: sackcloth for sorrow, ashes for repentance, fine linen for joy.

To be told to take off the mourning-garment is to be told that the season of loss is over, that the grief which had become her daily uniform is no longer the truth about her. The command is gentle but it is a command - put off, put on - as if the change must be chosen, stepped into, worn. Before a single exile has come home, before a stone of the wall is rebuilt, the city is told to dress for the homecoming.

What she puts on in place of mourning is a splendour she could never have manufactured, and the poem insists on this. Three times in two verses the source is named: “the glory that cometh from God,” “the righteousness which cometh from God,” the diadem “of the glory of the Everlasting” (vv. 1-2). The new clothing is a gift handed down from above, draped over a city that could never have woven it for herself - and it is lavish.

The robe of righteousness is double, a thick and ample covering; the head that hung low in grief is now lifted under a crown. And then the deepest change of all: a new name. The God who renames is the God who remakes, and the name He gives is itself a small poem - “The peace of righteousness, and The glory of God's worship” (v. 4). The city once known for her ruin will be known for the peace that flows from being right with God, and for being the place where God is rightly adored.

Her brightness, the poet adds, will be shown “unto every country under heaven” (v. 3): this is a glory meant to be seen by the whole world, broadcast across every country under heaven.

The newly-clothed city is now told to move. The same Jerusalem that sat down in her grief must get up, climb to a vantage point, and lift her eyes toward the sunrise (v. 5) - the posture of one finished waiting in the dark and now watching for the dawn. And what she sees is her children coming home. Verse 6 sets the going-out and the coming-back side by side, and the contrast is the whole point.

They departed on foot, trudging, “led away of their enemies” like a chained column of the defeated. But they do not come back the way they left. God brings them “exalted with glory, as children of the kingdom” - honoured heirs carried home in dignity. You can feel the poet refusing to let the humiliation stand as the last word. The journey out was shame; the journey back is splendour, and the difference is entirely God's doing.

There is a deliberate sweep in “from the west unto the east” (v. 5). The exiles had been scattered in every direction, and the poem gathers them from across the whole compass - no straggler too far, no corner of the dispersion overlooked. Jerusalem is told to face east, toward the sunrise, the quarter where light breaks first over a dark land; she watches for her children the way a sleepless household watches for the morning.

And they come “rejoicing in the remembrance of God” - glad, their joy rooted in the memory of the God who did not forget them in their far countries. This is the answer to exile that runs through the whole book of Baruch: a people who confessed their straying are now a people remembering and remembered, drawn back by the One who keeps His own in mind even when they are out of sight. The mother-city that thought her children lost stands on the height and counts them coming.

The poem's final picture is the road itself, and it is a road God reshapes the world to make. The steep ridges and long entrenched embankments that have stood for ages are cast down; the valleys are filled up to make the ground even (v. 7). The obstacles are fully removed - the broken country between the exiles and home graded flat. And the stated purpose is tender: a safe, level walk, “that Israel may go safely in the glory of God.” Then comes a detail almost startling in its gentleness: “the woods and every sweetsmelling tree shall overshadow Israel” (v. 8).

The forests themselves bend to the work, leaning over the marchers to shade them from the sun and perfume their road. The God who flattens mountains for you also thinks of your comfort in the heat of the day. Creation has become a servant pressed into the homecoming. The whole landscape is rearranged “by the commandment of God” for the ease and the joy of the ones coming home.

The last verse names who is on the road with them, and it changes everything. “God shall lead Israel” (v. 9) - He goes at the head of the column, the way the pillar of cloud and fire once went before the people in the wilderness; the exiles are brought home with God at their front. And the manner of the leading is piled up in glad words: “with joy in the light of his glory with the mercy and righteousness that cometh from him.” Three things travel with the homecoming.

There is joy - this is a procession of gladness. There is the light of his glory - the same God-given splendour that clothed the city in verse 1 now lights the whole road, so that they walk in His brightness rather than in the dark of exile. And there is mercy and righteousness - God's tenderness toward a people who had failed Him, joined to His unwavering faithfulness to His own promises, “that cometh from him.” The poem ends exactly where it began: everything that matters - the glory, the righteousness, the mercy, the light - comes from God, poured out on a people who did nothing but rise, look east, and let themselves be led.