Jeremiah 36
This is a story with a date stamped on it: in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah (v. 1), roughly 605 B.C., with the armies of Babylon already on the move. For more than two decades Jeremiah had spoken the LORD's words and watched them fall on deaf ears. Now the LORD gives a new command - not to speak, but to write: Take thee a roll of a book, and write therein all the words that I have spoken unto thee against Israel, and against Judah, and against all the nations, from the day I spake unto thee, from the days of Josiah, even unto this day (v. 2). The whole burden of a prophet's career is to be gathered onto one scroll. And the reason is mercy, not merely record-keeping: It may be that the house of Judah will hear all the evil which I purpose to do unto them; that they may return every man from his evil way; that I may forgive their iniquity and their sin (v. 3).3
Jeremiah is shut up - barred from the temple - so the writing and the reading fall to Baruch, his scribe, who takes down every word at the prophet's mouth and then reads the scroll aloud in the LORD's house on a fast day, in the ears of all the people (vv. 4-10). From there the words travel upward. A young man named Michaiah hears them and carries the report to the king's officials; the princes summon Baruch, hear the scroll for themselves, and they were afraid both one and other (v. 16). They know the king must be told, and they know what he is likely to do - so first they tell Baruch and Jeremiah to hide. The scroll is laid up in a chamber, and the words are reported to King Jehoiakim.
What the king does is the dark center of the chapter. Sitting in his winter house with a fire on the hearth, he has the scroll read to him, and as each few columns are read, he cuts them off with a penknife and throws them into the flames, until all the roll was consumed in the fire (v. 23). There is no trembling, no torn garments, no fear of God - only contempt (v. 24). He even sends men to arrest the prophet and his scribe, but the LORD hid them (v. 26). And then the word the fire was meant to end simply comes back: Take thee again another roll, and write in it all the former words that were in the first roll (v. 28). The scroll is rewritten - and it returns larger than before, for there were added besides unto them many like words (v. 32). The king has burned the page and not touched the word.2
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Jeremiah 36:1-10Take Thee a Roll of a Book
1And it came to pass in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah, that this word came unto Jeremiah from the LORD, saying, 2Take thee a roll of a book, and write therein all the words that I have spoken unto thee against Israel, and against Judah, and against all the nations, from the day I spake unto thee, from the days of Josiah, even unto this day. 3It may be that the house of Judah will hear all the evil which I purpose to do unto them; that they may return every man from his evil way; that I may forgive their iniquity and their sin. 4Then Jeremiah called Baruch the son of Neriah: and Baruch wrote from the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of the LORD, which he had spoken unto him, upon a roll of a book. 5And Jeremiah commanded Baruch, saying, I am shut up; I cannot go into the house of the LORD: 6Therefore go thou, and read in the roll, which thou hast written from my mouth, the words of the LORD in the ears of the people in the LORD’S house upon the fasting day: and also thou shalt read them in the ears of all Judah that come out of their cities. 7It may be they will present their supplication before the LORD, and will return every one from his evil way: for great is the anger and the fury that the LORD hath pronounced against this people. 8And Baruch the son of Neriah did according to all that Jeremiah the prophet commanded him, reading in the book the words of the LORD in the LORD’S house. 9And it came to pass in the fifth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah, in the ninth month, that they proclaimed a fast before the LORD to all the people in Jerusalem, and to all the people that came from the cities of Judah unto Jerusalem. 10Then read Baruch in the book the words of Jeremiah in the house of the LORD, in the chamber of Gemariah the son of Shaphan the scribe, in the higher court, at the entry of the new gate of the LORD’S house, in the ears of all the people.
After more than twenty years of speaking, the LORD now tells Jeremiah to write: Take thee a roll of a book, and write therein all the words that I have spoken unto thee… from the days of Josiah, even unto this day (v. 2). The command gathers the whole sweep of a prophet's career - every oracle against Israel, Judah, and the nations - onto a single scroll. Writing does something speaking cannot. A spoken word lands once, on whoever happens to be present, and then fades on the air; a written word endures, can be read again, can travel to those who never heard the prophet, and can outlast the prophet himself. By committing the words to a scroll, the LORD is making them permanent and portable - a fixed testimony that no longer depends on Jeremiah being in the room. And there is something fitting in the timing. Judah is running out of years; the word is being secured for a future in which the prophet will not always be there to repeat it. The first thing this chapter teaches is the sheer durability God builds into His word by having it written down at all.1
Notice why the scroll is to be written and read - the reason is given twice, and it is not condemnation but rescue: It may be that the house of Judah will hear all the evil which I purpose to do unto them; that they may return every man from his evil way; that I may forgive their iniquity and their sin (v. 3); and again, It may be they will present their supplication before the LORD, and will return every one from his evil way (v. 7). The little phrase it may be opens a door. The whole grim scroll of judgment is sent out in the hope that it will not have to come true - that hearing how heavy the sentence is, the people will turn, and the LORD will forgive. This is the heart of true prophecy of judgment: it is never mere prediction for its own sake. It is a warning held out so that the thing warned of can be escaped. God does not want to do the evil He has pronounced; He wants His people to return. Even the harshest words on this scroll are, at bottom, an act of mercy - a last appeal from a God who would far rather forgive than punish, reaching out to a people running headlong toward ruin.
A small but telling detail shapes the whole story: And Jeremiah commanded Baruch, saying, I am shut up; I cannot go into the house of the LORD (v. 5). The prophet is barred - whether imprisoned, or banned from the temple precincts because of his message, the word means he is restrained, unable to deliver the scroll himself. So the task passes to Baruch, his faithful scribe, who has written from the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of the LORD (v. 4) and now must also read them aloud. Two things are worth seeing here. First, the LORD's word is not stopped by the silencing of His prophet; when one mouth is shut, another carries it. The opposition that locked Jeremiah away did not lock away the message. Second, the work of God moves forward on the courage of an ordinary helper. Baruch is not the prophet; he is the scribe, the man with the pen and the steady hand. Yet without his willingness to write the words down and then stand up in the crowded temple and read a deeply unwelcome scroll aloud, the whole chapter does not happen. Faithfulness in a supporting role is no small thing. The word reached the people because a scribe was willing to do the part that was his to do.3
The timing of the reading is no accident: they proclaimed a fast before the LORD to all the people in Jerusalem (v. 9), and on that day Baruch reads the scroll in the house of the LORD… at the entry of the new gate… in the ears of all the people (v. 10). A fast was called in a time of national danger - Babylon was rising, and the city was afraid. So the temple was crowded with people who had come to seek God's favour, gathered from Jerusalem and from all the cities of Judah. Into that anxious, religious crowd Baruch reads the word that tells them exactly why the danger has come and exactly what they must do about it: return every one from his evil way. It is a moment heavy with possibility. Here are people fasting, frightened, assembled at the very house of God, hearing the very word that could save them. Everything is in place for the repentance the LORD hoped for in verse 3. The fast shows they sensed something was wrong; the question the rest of the chapter will answer is whether they will let the word name what was wrong and turn. The stage is set, in the most sacred place, on the most solemn day, for a nation to come back to God.
Jeremiah 36:11-19They Were Afraid Both One and Other
11When Michaiah the son of Gemariah, the son of Shaphan, had heard out of the book all the words of the LORD, 12Then he went down into the king’s house, into the scribe’s chamber: and, lo, all the princes sat there, even Elishama the scribe, and Delaiah the son of Shemaiah, and Elnathan the son of Achbor, and Gemariah the son of Shaphan, and Zedekiah the son of Hananiah, and all the princes. 13Then Michaiah declared unto them all the words that he had heard, when Baruch read the book in the ears of the people. 14Therefore all the princes sent Jehudi the son of Nethaniah, the son of Shelemiah, the son of Cushi, unto Baruch, saying, Take in thine hand the roll wherein thou hast read in the ears of the people, and come. So Baruch the son of Neriah took the roll in his hand, and came unto them. 15And they said unto him, Sit down now, and read it in our ears. So Baruch read it in their ears. 16Now it came to pass, when they had heard all the words, they were afraid both one and other, and said unto Baruch, We will surely tell the king of all these words. 17And they asked Baruch, saying, Tell us now, How didst thou write all these words at his mouth? 18Then Baruch answered them, He pronounced all these words unto me with his mouth, and I wrote them with ink in the book. 19Then said the princes unto Baruch, Go, hide thee, thou and Jeremiah; and let no man know where ye be.
The word now begins to climb. A young man named Michaiah - grandson of Shaphan, from a family that had long stood with the prophets - hears the whole scroll read and is shaken enough to act: he went down into the king's house, into the scribe's chamber: and, lo, all the princes sat there (v. 12). He reports to the assembled officials everything he has heard. The princes, in turn, send for Baruch and ask him to read the scroll again, this time to them: Sit down now, and read it in our ears (v. 15). It is worth watching how carefully the chapter traces this chain - from Baruch in the temple, to Michaiah, to the princes, and soon to the king. The word of God is making its way upward through the ranks of a nation, reaching ear after ear. And these officials, unlike the king who will follow, take it seriously enough to want to hear it for themselves rather than dismiss it secondhand. There is a kind of integrity in that. They do not bury the report or wave it off; they bring in the scribe and listen to the whole thing. How a person handles an unwelcome word the moment it reaches them is already a revelation of the heart - and the princes, at least at first, handle it with sober attention.
The princes' response to the scroll is the hinge of this section, and the chapter states it plainly: when they had heard all the words, they were afraid both one and other, and said unto Baruch, We will surely tell the king of all these words (v. 16). This is the right response - the response the whole reading was meant to produce. They feared. They sensed the weight of what they had heard, recognized that it was no ordinary message, and understood that the king had to know. Hold this fear in mind, because it is the exact thing the king will so conspicuously lack a few verses later: when Jehoiakim hears the same words, they were not afraid, nor rent their garments (v. 24). The contrast is deliberate and devastating. The same scroll, the same words, two utterly different hearts. The princes tremble; the king reaches for a knife. Scripture is quietly teaching that the word of God does not produce the same effect in everyone - not because the word changes, but because hearts differ. To the humble it brings holy fear and the impulse to act; to the hardened it brings only irritation. The reading exposes the listener. And the trembling of the princes stands as the witness that the king's contempt was a choice, not a necessity.
The princes ask a pointed question, and Baruch's answer is simpler than they might have expected: Tell us now, How didst thou write all these words at his mouth? Then Baruch answered them, He pronounced all these words unto me with his mouth, and I wrote them with ink in the book (vv. 17-18). They want to know the origin of the scroll - was this Baruch's own composition, or something more? His reply is unadorned and clear: Jeremiah spoke, and Baruch wrote, word for word, with ink. There is no mystery about the mechanics and no inflation of his own role. The prophet's mouth, the scribe's pen, ordinary ink, an ordinary scroll - and yet what was set down was all the words of the LORD (v. 11). The plainness of the account is itself instructive. The word of God came through entirely human means - a real voice, a real hand, real ink - without ceasing to be the LORD's own word. Baruch does not claim to have improved or interpreted it; he simply received and recorded it faithfully. Here is the dignity of the faithful scribe once more: his glory is not in originality but in accuracy, in getting down exactly what was spoken and adding nothing of his own.
Knowing the king as they do, the princes give Baruch an urgent, protective instruction: Go, hide thee, thou and Jeremiah; and let no man know where ye be (v. 19). They are right to be worried. They have heard the scroll, they have feared, and they can already guess how Jehoiakim will react to words like these. So before they carry the report to the palace, they make sure the prophet and his scribe are out of reach. There is real human kindness in this. Not every official in Jerusalem was an enemy of the word; here are men of the court who, even as they fulfill their duty to inform the king, take pains to shield the messengers from his anger. It is a reminder that God often preserves His servants through the quiet decency of people placed exactly where they are needed. The princes cannot stop the king from burning the scroll, but they can get Baruch and Jeremiah to safety - and they do. And their instinct proves exactly sound: the king will indeed send men to seize the pair (v. 26), and will find them already gone. The warning of the princes in verse 19 is the human means by which the divine hiding of verse 26 is carried out.
Jeremiah 36:20-26He Cut It With the Penknife, and Cast It Into the Fire
20And they went in to the king into the court, but they laid up the roll in the chamber of Elishama the scribe, and told all the words in the ears of the king. 21So the king sent Jehudi to fetch the roll: and he took it out of Elishama the scribe’s chamber. And Jehudi read it in the ears of the king, and in the ears of all the princes which stood beside the king. 22Now the king sat in the winterhouse in the ninth month: and there was a fire on the hearth burning before him. 23And it came to pass, that when Jehudi had read three or four leaves, he cut it with the penknife, and cast it into the fire that was on the hearth, until all the roll was consumed in the fire that was on the hearth. 24Yet they were not afraid, nor rent their garments, neither the king, nor any of his servants that heard all these words. 25Nevertheless Elnathan and Delaiah and Gemariah had made intercession to the king that he would not burn the roll: but he would not hear them. 26But the king commanded Jerahmeel the son of Hammelech, and Seraiah the son of Azriel, and Shelemiah the son of Abdeel, to take Baruch the scribe and Jeremiah the prophet: but the LORD hid them.
The scene the chapter has been building toward is set with quiet, almost cinematic care: Now the king sat in the winterhouse in the ninth month: and there was a fire on the hearth burning before him (v. 22). The ninth month falls in deep winter, and the king is in his heated apartment, a brazier glowing in front of him. The detail matters because the fire is right there, within arm's reach, the instrument of what is about to happen. The scroll is fetched from the scribe's chamber and Jehudi begins to read it aloud, in the ears of the king, and in the ears of all the princes which stood beside the king (v. 21). Picture it: the prophet's lifework, the gathered word of the LORD, read column by column to the most powerful man in Judah - on a cold day, by a warm fire, in a room full of officials. The same words that made the princes tremble in the previous scene are now being spoken directly to the throne. Everything hangs on what the king will do with them. The narrator slows down and lets us watch, because the next verse is one of the most chilling acts in all of Scripture - and the fire is already burning before the king, waiting.3
It is hard to overstate how deliberate the king's act is: when Jehudi had read three or four leaves, he cut it with the penknife, and cast it into the fire that was on the hearth, until all the roll was consumed in the fire (v. 23). This is no fit of sudden rage. It is methodical. As each few columns are read, the king - or Jehudi at his command - takes a scribe's penknife, slices off the portion just read, and feeds it to the flames, and then the next, and the next, until all the roll was consumed. He hears a little, burns a little, hears a little more, burns a little more. The tool is bitterly ironic: the penknife was a scribe's instrument, used to cut and trim the reed pens that wrote scrolls and to prepare the writing surface. The very kind of blade that served the making of God's word is turned to its destruction. And the act is a deliberate answer to the word: the king is not merely disposing of a document, he is rejecting its claim on him, piece by piece, in front of his whole court. There could be no clearer picture of a heart refusing the word of God - not ignorant of it, but hearing it and cutting it to pieces, choosing the warmth of his own fire over the fear of the LORD.
The narrator now drives home the contrast that has been building since verse 16: Yet they were not afraid, nor rent their garments, neither the king, nor any of his servants that heard all these words (v. 24). When the princes heard the scroll, they were afraid both one and other; when the king hears it, there is no fear at all. The torn garment was the ancient sign of grief, alarm, and repentance - and not one person at the throne tears his robe. The silence of their fear is louder than the crackle of the fire. And the chapter wants us to remember that this is precisely how the king's own father behaved when he heard a scroll of God's word read: Josiah rent his clothes and humbled himself, and judgment was held back in his day. Jehoiakim does the opposite of his father, and the difference is the difference between life and death for a nation. There is also a small note of conscience left in the room: Elnathan and Delaiah and Gemariah had made intercession to the king that he would not burn the roll: but he would not hear them (v. 25). Some did object. Some did try to stop him. But the king would not hear - the same charge laid against the whole people. Hardness of heart is finally a refusal to hear, even when wiser voices plead.
Having burned the scroll, the king moves against the men behind it: he commanded… to take Baruch the scribe and Jeremiah the prophet (v. 26). It is not enough to destroy the word; he wants to silence its messengers too. But the verse ends with five words that quietly overturn all his power: but the LORD hid them. The king of Judah, with soldiers at his command and the full reach of the state, sends men to arrest a prophet and a scribe - and cannot find them, because God has hidden them. The contrast could not be sharper. The same king who imagined he could destroy the word of God by burning a scroll cannot even lay hands on the two men who carried it. Notice, too, how the LORD's hiding works through the earlier kindness of the princes, who in verse 19 had urged Baruch and Jeremiah to go into hiding. Divine protection and human prudence are not rivals here; God preserves His servants through the warnings and decency of people placed exactly where they are needed. The fire consumed paper and ink. It did not touch the word, and it could not reach the men. Everything the king did in his fury proved powerless against the purposes of God.
Jeremiah 36:27-32Take Thee Again Another Roll
27Then the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah, after that the king had burned the roll, and the words which Baruch wrote at the mouth of Jeremiah, saying, 28Take thee again another roll, and write in it all the former words that were in the first roll, which Jehoiakim the king of Judah hath burned. 29And thou shalt say to Jehoiakim king of Judah, Thus saith the LORD; Thou hast burned this roll, saying, Why hast thou written therein, saying, The king of Babylon shall certainly come and destroy this land, and shall cause to cease from thence man and beast? 30Therefore thus saith the LORD of Jehoiakim king of Judah; He shall have none to sit upon the throne of David: and his dead body shall be cast out in the day to the heat, and in the night to the frost. 31And I will punish him and his seed and his servants for their iniquity; and I will bring upon them, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and upon the men of Judah, all the evil that I have pronounced against them; but they hearkened not. 32Then took Jeremiah another roll, and gave it to Baruch the scribe, the son of Neriah; who wrote therein from the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of the book which Jehoiakim king of Judah had burned in the fire: and there were added besides unto them many like words.
The king's fire is answered not with lament but with a command, and the command is almost breathtaking in its calm: Then the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah, after that the king had burned the roll… Take thee again another roll, and write in it all the former words that were in the first roll, which Jehoiakim the king of Judah hath burned (vv. 27-28). There is no panic, no mourning over a lost masterpiece, no scrambling to reconstruct something precious that can never be recovered. The LORD simply says: write it again. The whole assault of the king is met with a sentence that treats the burning as no real loss at all - an inconvenience, not a defeat. And notice the unspoken claim buried in the command. The word can be perfectly restored because it never belonged to the scroll in the first place; it belonged to the LORD, and He still has it, every line. Baruch had written from the mouth of Jeremiah, and the same mouth can speak it again. The fire destroyed a copy. It did not touch the source. This is the great reversal of the chapter: the king did his worst to the word of God, and the word of God answers by simply coming back, intact, as though the fire had never been lit.
The second scroll does not merely repeat the first - it carries a new and personal word of judgment against the king who burned the first: Thou hast burned this roll, saying, Why hast thou written therein… The king of Babylon shall certainly come and destroy this land? (v. 29). Jehoiakim had tried to make the prophecy untrue by destroying the page that bore it; the LORD answers that the prophecy stands, and now adds a sentence aimed straight at him. He shall have none to sit upon the throne of David: and his dead body shall be cast out in the day to the heat, and in the night to the frost (v. 30). The king who sat warm by his winter fire while he burned God's word is told his own corpse will lie exposed to the day's heat and the night's frost, denied even an honourable burial. The man who cut off the scroll will have his own line cut off from the throne. There is a hard justice in the symmetry: he despised the word, and the word he despised now describes his end. And the closing charge of verse 31 names the root of it all in a single phrase - but they hearkened not. Everything came down to hearing. The whole tragedy of Jehoiakim, and of the nation with him, is folded into those three words: the word came, and they would not hear.
The chapter ends with a sentence that turns the king's bonfire into something almost laughable: Then took Jeremiah another roll, and gave it to Baruch the scribe… who wrote therein from the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of the book which Jehoiakim king of Judah had burned in the fire: and there were added besides unto them many like words (v. 32). Read that last clause slowly, because it is the point of the whole story. The new scroll did not merely match the old one. It was larger. Everything the king burned was restored, and then more was added - many like words, fresh prophecy piled onto the recovered text. The king sought to subtract the word of God from the world, and the net result was that there was now more of it than before. His fire did not diminish the word; it occasioned its increase. This is how God so often turns the assaults of His enemies: the very act meant to destroy His work becomes the means of enlarging it. Jehoiakim's name survives in Scripture chiefly as the man who burned the scroll and could not make it stay burned - while the words he tried to destroy are still being read, in his shame and to our blessing, this very day. The page was ash by nightfall. The word outlived the king, the kingdom, and the empire that came to swallow them both.
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Jeremiah 36 with Rashi, Radak, and other classical commentators side by side - useful for megillah (vv. 2, 6, 23, 28, the “roll” or scroll), for ta'ar ha-sofer (v. 23, the scribe's “penknife”), and for the verb qara (to read aloud) that drives the whole chapter as the scroll is read in the temple, to the princes, and at last to the king.
- Jeremiah 36 ↔ Isaiah 40 · 1 Peter 1 · Matthew 24 · John 1Intertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Jeremiah 36 to the rest of Scripture - the scroll burned yet rewritten and enlarged (vv. 23, 32) read alongside the word of our God shall stand for ever (Isa. 40:8) and the word of the LORD endureth for ever (1 Pet. 1:25), the futility of destroying the page beside my words shall not pass away (Matt. 24:35), and the word that cannot be unmade beside the One who is Himself the Word (John 1:14).
- Jeremiah 36 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Jeremiah 36 - the dating to Jehoiakim's fourth and fifth years (vv. 1, 9), the meaning of Jeremiah being “shut up” in verse 5, the layout of an ancient scroll and the “leaves” or columns Jehudi cut away (v. 23), and the contrast between the trembling princes and the unmoved king.
Where this echoes in Scripture
Take Thee a Roll of a Book
- Ezekiel 2:9-3:3an hand was sent unto me; and, lo, a roll of a book was therein... eat this roll, and go speak unto the house of Israel.The same <em>megillah</em> as verse 2 - the word of God given as a written scroll to a prophet for a rebellious house.
- Ezekiel 33:11I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live.The heart behind verse 3 - the warning written and read so that the people might turn and be spared.
- Mark 1:15The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.The call to return of verses 3 and 7 on the lips of the One who came after - warning that is mercy.
- 2 Kings 22:11when the king had heard the words of the book of the law... he rent his clothes.Josiah, Jehoiakim’s own father, tearing his clothes at a scroll’s reading - the right response the fast day in verses 9-10 set up.
- Romans 2:4the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance.The purpose of the scroll in verse 3 stated plainly - God’s warning is His goodness leading toward repentance.
They Were Afraid Both One and Other
- 2 Kings 22:11-13when the king had heard the words of the book of the law... he rent his clothes... Great is the wrath of the LORD that is kindled against us.The fear of the princes in verse 16 modeled by a king - Josiah trembling at the scroll where his son will not.
- John 7:30Then they sought to take him: but no man laid hands on him, because his hour was not yet come.The hiding of verse 19 carried further - the Word in person, unseizable until His appointed hour.
- Acts 5:38-39if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought: but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it.The princes’ sober fear (v. 16) given words - the danger of fighting against a work that is from God.
- Proverbs 28:14Happy is the man that feareth alway: but he that hardeneth his heart shall fall into mischief.The two hearts of this chapter - the trembling princes (v. 16) and the hardening king (v. 24) set side by side.
- 1 Kings 18:4Obadiah took an hundred prophets, and hid them by fifty in a cave, and fed them with bread and water.The pattern of verse 19 - faithful officials in a hostile court hiding the servants of God from the king.
He Cut It With the Penknife, and Cast It Into the Fire
- Isaiah 40:8The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.The truth the burned scroll proves (v. 23) - God’s word outlasts everything that rises against it.
- Matthew 24:35Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.The futility of the fire (v. 23) stated by the Word Himself - His words cannot be destroyed.
- 2 Kings 22:11when the king had heard the words of the book of the law, that he rent his clothes.Jehoiakim’s own father doing the opposite of verse 24 - tearing his clothes where his son refuses to fear.
- Psalm 119:89For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven.Why the king’s fire was powerless (v. 23) - God’s word is fixed in heaven, beyond reach of any blade.
- Acts 12:24But the word of God grew and multiplied.The pattern of the rewritten scroll - the word opposed and burned only spreading and increasing.
Take Thee Again Another Roll
- John 1:1, 14In the beginning was the Word... And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.The enduring word of verse 32 in person - the Word that cannot be unmade, made flesh.
- 1 Peter 1:24-25the word of the LORD endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.The lesson of the rewritten scroll (v. 32) stated outright - the word of the LORD stands for ever.
- 2 Kings 24:1-2In his days Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up... And the LORD sent against him bands of the Chaldees.The sentence on Jehoiakim (vv. 29-31) coming true - the very judgment he tried to burn away.
- Isaiah 55:11so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void.Why the fire was futile (v. 32) - the word God sends accomplishes what He pleases, and cannot be stopped.
- Jeremiah 22:18-19They shall not lament for him... he shall be buried with the burial of an ass, drawn and cast forth.The fate of verse 30 foretold earlier - the dishonoured end of the king who burned the scroll.