Jeremiah 36:25

36:25 The king did not even listen to Elnathan, Delaiah, and Gemariah, who had urged him not to burn the scroll. ¹ 

Jeremiah 36:2

36:2 “Get a scroll. ²  Write on it everything I have told you to say ³  about Israel, Judah, and all the other nations since I began to speak to you in the reign of Josiah until now. ⁴ 

Jeremiah 22:12

22:12 For he will die in the country where they took him as a captive. He will never see this land again.” ⁵ 

Jeremiah 22:2

22:2 Say: ‘Listen, O king of Judah who follows in David’s succession. ⁶  You, your officials, and your subjects who pass through the gates of this palace must listen to what the Lord says. ⁷ 

Jeremiah 34:20

34:20 I will hand them over to their enemies who want to kill them. Their dead bodies will become food for the birds and the wild animals. ⁸ 

¹ tn Heb “And also Elnathan, Delaiah, and Gemariah urged [or had urged] the king not to burn the scroll, but he did not listen to them.” The translation attempts to lessen the clash in chronological sequencing with the preceding. This sentence is essentially a flash back to a time before the scroll was totally burned (v. 23).

² sn Heb “a roll [or scroll] of a document.” Scrolls consisted of pieces of leather or parchment sewn together and rolled up on wooden rollers. The writing was written from right to left and from top to bottom in columns and the scroll unrolled from the left roller and rolled onto the right one as the scroll was read. The scroll varied in length depending on the contents. This scroll was probably not all that long since it was read three times in a single day (vv. 10-11, 15-16, 21-23).

³ sn The intent is hardly that of giving a verbatim report of everything that the Lord had told him to say or of everything that he had actually said. What the scroll undoubtedly contained was a synopsis of Jeremiah’s messages as constructed from his memory.

⁴ sn This refers to the messages that Jeremiah delivered during the last eighteen years of Josiah, the three month reign of Jehoahaz and the first four years of Jehoiakim’s reign (the period between Josiah’s thirteenth year [cf. 1:2] and the fourth year of Jehoiakim [v. 1]). The exact content of this scroll is unknown since many of the messages in the present book are undated. It is also not known what relation this scroll had to the present form of the book of Jeremiah, since this scroll was destroyed and another one written that contained more than this one did (cf. v. 32). Since Jeremiah continued his ministry down to the fall of Jerusalem in 587/6 b.c. (1:2) and beyond (cf. Jer 40-44) much more was added to those two scrolls even later.

⁵ sn This prophecy was fulfilled according to 2 Kgs 23:34.

⁶ tn Heb “who sits on David’s throne.”

⁷ tn Heb “Hear the word of the Lord, O king of Judah who sits on the throne of David, you, and your officials and your people who pass through these gates.”

⁸ sn See this same phrase in Jer 7:33; 16:4; 19:7.