Baruch 1

¹ These are the words 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,[*a] on the seventh day of the month, at the time when the Chaldaeans captured Jerusalem and burned it down.

³ Baruch read the words 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, least no less than 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 for the priest Jehoiakim son of Hilkiah, son of Shallum, and the other priests, and for as many of the people as were with him in Jerusalem.

⁸ It was Baruch who on the tenth day of Sivan had recovered 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 when Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had deported Jeconiah from Jerusalem to Babylon, together with the princes, the metalworkers, the men of rank and the common people.

¹⁰ With this – they wrote – we are sending you money with which to pay for holocausts, offerings for sin, and incense; prepare oblations, and offer them on the altar of the Lord our God.

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

¹² pray that the Lord may give us strength and clear understanding so that we may lead our lives under the protection of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and of his son Belshazzar, and by our long service 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 yet been turned away from us.

¹⁴ Lastly, you are to read the book aloud which we send you with this and so make public confession in the house of the Lord on the feastday[*b] and on days of solemn assembly.

¹⁵ You are to say:

¹⁶ to our kings and princes, our priests, our prophets, as to our ancestors,

¹⁷ because we have sinned in the sight of 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 the land 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 so the disasters, and the curse which the Lord pronounced through his servant Moses the day he brought our fathers out of Egypt to give us a land where milk and honey flow, have seized on us, disasters we experience today.

²¹ Despite all the words of those prophets whom he sent us, we have not listened to the voice of the Lord our God,

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