Baruch - Chapter 1

¹ This is the text of the book written in Babylon by Baruch son of Neraiah, son of Mahseiah, son of Zedekiah, son of Hasadiah, son of Hilkiah,

² in the fifth year, on the seventh day of the month, at the time when the Chaldaeans had captured Jerusalem and burned it down.

³ Baruch read the text of this book aloud to Jeconiah son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, and to all the people who had come to hear the reading,

⁴ to the nobles and the sons of the king, and to the elders; to the whole people, that is, to the least no less than to the greatest, to all who lived in Babylon beside the river Sud.

⁵ On hearing it they wept, fasted and prayed before the Lord;

⁶ and they collected as much money as each could afford

⁷ and sent it to Jerusalem to the priest Jehoiakim son of Hilkiah, son of Shallum, and the other priests, and all the people who were with him in Jerusalem.

⁸ Also on the tenth day of Sivan he was given the utensils of the house of the Lord, which had been removed from the Temple, to take them back to the land of Judah; these were silver utensils which Zedekiah son of Josiah, king of Judah, had had made

⁹ after Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had deported Jeconiah from Jerusalem to Babylon, together with the princes, the metalworkers, the nobles and the common people.

¹⁰ Now, they wrote, we are sending you money to pay for burnt offerings, offerings for sin, and incense. Prepare oblations and offer them on the altar of the Lord our God;

¹¹ and pray for the long life of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and of his son Belshazzar, that they may endure on earth as long as the heavens endure;

¹² and that the Lord may give us strength and enlighten our eyes, so that we may lead our lives under the protection of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and of his son Belshazzar, and that we may serve them for a long time and win their favour.

¹³ Also pray to the Lord our God for us, because we have sinned against him, and the anger, the fury of the Lord, has still not turned away from us.

¹⁴ Lastly, you must read the booklet which we are sending you, publicly in the house of the Lord on the feastday and appropriate days.

¹⁵ You must say: Saving justice is the Lord's, we have only the look of shame we bear, as is the case today for the people of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem,

¹⁶ for our kings and princes, our priests, our prophets, and for our ancestors,

¹⁷ because we have sinned before the Lord,

¹⁸ have disobeyed him, and have not listened to the voice of the Lord our God telling us to follow the commandments which the Lord had ordained for us.

¹⁹ From the day when the Lord brought our ancestors out of Egypt until today we have been disobedient to the Lord our God, we have been disloyal, refusing to listen to his voice.

²⁰ And we are not free even today of the disasters and the curse which the Lord pronounced through his servant Moses the day he brought our ancestors out of Egypt to give us a land flowing with milk and honey.

²¹ We have not listened to the voice of the Lord our God in all the words of those prophets he sent us;

²² but, each following the dictates of our evil heart, we have taken to serving alien gods, and doing what is displeasing to the Lord our God.

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