Exile prayer, wisdom poem, and a letter about idols · compiled c. 200-100 BC
Baruch
A book written in the voice of Jeremiah's secretary, teaching a scattered people how to pray from far away.
- 6Chapters
- 213Verses
Written: c. 200-100 BCE (composite) · Original language: Hebrew (likely for chapters 1-3:8); Greek for remainder
King James Version Apocrypha (1769 standardized text) · public domain
Read Baruch
King James Version + Apocrypha (standardized 1769 text), eBible.org USFX edition of the Crosswire/eBible KJV — Public Domain — Chapter 6 is the Letter of Jeremiah, which the KJV prints as part of Baruch under the heading 'The Epistle of Jeremy'.
Featured studies on this book
— the deep dives, each its own page
Plain answers first
What this book is
Baruch is a short book in the name of Baruch son of Neriah, the scribe who wrote Jeremiah's words down for him (Jeremiah 36 and 45). It presents itself as a letter he sent from Babylon back to Jerusalem after the city fell.
The first part is a long confession. The exiles admit that the disaster was deserved, that they did not listen to the prophets, and they ask God for mercy. The prayer is close in shape and even in wording to Daniel 9, which makes the two worth reading side by side.
The middle is a poem about wisdom. It asks where wisdom is found, answers that no explorer or merchant found her, and says God gave her to Israel in the law. One line of that poem, that wisdom afterward appeared on earth and lived among people, was quoted often by early Christian writers who heard the coming of Christ in it.
Then comes comfort. Jerusalem speaks as a grieving mother, and the book answers her with a promise of children coming home. Chapter 6 is a separate piece altogether: the Epistle of Jeremy, a letter warning exiles not to fear idols, which many Bibles print as its own short book and the King James Apocrypha prints as Baruch chapter 6.
Most scholars think the book was assembled from several older pieces, likely between about 200 and 100 BC, with parts perhaps written earlier in Hebrew. It survives in Greek.
Why a student of the 66 should still open it
Why read it: and how
This is one of the clearest windows we have into how Jewish exiles actually prayed. The confession shows a people reading their own history through the law and taking responsibility for it. The wisdom poem shows how Israel came to identify wisdom with God's own instruction, the same move Sirach 24 makes. And chapter 6 puts Jeremiah 10 and Isaiah 44 into story form: the gods are carried, dusted, and locked up, and they cannot save anyone. If you want to understand the world Jesus was born into, this is the kind of book that formed it.
Read Daniel 9 first, then Baruch 1-3, and notice how much of the same prayer language reappears. Read the wisdom poem slowly as poetry, not argument. Save chapter 6 for last and read it as satire, because that is what it is. Treat every line as a witness to how faithful Jews thought, not as a word from God to settle anything.
The canon question, honestly
Why it stands outside the 66
Baruch is not in the Hebrew Bible, and Jewish tradition never received it as Scripture. Jerome, translating the Bible into Latin around AD 400, said plainly that the Hebrews neither read Baruch nor possess it, and he set it aside with the other books he called apocrypha. The Reformers followed the Hebrew list, so Protestant Bibles print Baruch outside the canon or not at all. The Roman Catholic Church at the Council of Trent in 1546 affirmed it as Scripture, and Eastern Orthodox churches read it as well. So the disagreement here is old, honest, and about a real question: which list the church inherited, and from whom.
Doors into the text
Key moments
Baruch reads the book aloud to the exiles, who weep, fast, and send money and words home to Jerusalem.
The exiles own the judgment in language that runs remarkably close to the prayer of Daniel 9.
The famous poem: no merchant or explorer discovered wisdom; God gave her to Israel in the law.
The city addresses her scattered children, and is told to take courage.
A promise of return that echoes Isaiah, and closely parallels a Jewish hymn from the same era.
A separate letter, printed here as chapter 6: a blunt takedown of idols that cannot see, eat, or defend themselves.
Plainly told
The story it tells
A letter from Babylon
The book opens with Baruch, Jeremiah's scribe, reading a scroll aloud to the exiles in Babylon. They weep, fast, and send both money and the scroll itself back to the priests in Jerusalem.
We deserved this
What follows is a long communal confession: the exiles admit the disaster was earned, that they did not listen to the prophets, and they ask God for mercy. The prayer runs close in shape and even wording to Daniel 9.
Where is wisdom found?
A wisdom poem asks who has gone up into heaven or crossed the sea to find wisdom, and answers that no one has: God simply gave her to Israel in the law. "She is the book of the commandments of God," the poem says, the same move Sirach 24 makes.
A mother's grief answered
Jerusalem speaks as a grieving mother to her scattered children, and the book answers her with a promise: her sons and daughters are coming home, and she is told to put off her garment of mourning.
A letter about idols
Chapter 6, printed separately in many Bibles as the Epistle of Jeremy, is a different piece entirely: a letter warning exiles not to fear idols, working through everything a cult statue cannot do: see, hear, defend itself, or even wipe the dust and vermin off its own face.
Dates hedged where scholarship hedges
Where it sits in history
- c. 300-200 BC (disputed)
The Epistle of Jeremy (later chapter 6) may already be circulating; a Greek fragment turned up at Qumran (7Q2).
- c. 200-100 BC
The confession, wisdom poem, and consolation are compiled into the book known as Baruch.
- c. AD 393
Jerome, translating Jeremiah from the Hebrew, states that Baruch is neither read nor found among the Hebrews and omits it.
- 1534
Luther prints Baruch among the Apocrypha in his German Bible.
- 1546
The Council of Trent affirms Baruch as canonical Scripture for Roman Catholics.
The disagreement is old: here it is plainly
Where the traditions stand
Baruch never appears in the Hebrew Bible, and Jewish tradition has no record of receiving it as Scripture: no complete Hebrew text of the book has survived, and it stands outside every Hebrew canon list.
Jerome said so plainly in his preface to Jeremiah: the Book of Baruch, Jeremiah's scribe, is neither read nor found among the Hebrews, and he left it out of his Hebrew-based translation.
The Reformers followed the Hebrew list. Luther printed it among the Apocrypha, unimpressed with the book but keeping it available to read; English Bibles from Coverdale through the King James of 1611 did the same, and Article VI of the Church of England names it among the books read for example of life rather than for establishing doctrine.
Rome affirmed Baruch as canonical Scripture at Trent in 1546, reading it as part of the Jeremiah corpus, and Eastern Orthodox churches receive it the same way, following the order of the Septuagint. The disagreement is old and honest: about which list of books each tradition inherited from its own history, not about any single claim in the text.
| Tradition | Where this book stands |
|---|---|
| jewish | not canonical; Hebrew text of chapters 1-3 likely existed but is lost |
| anglican | apocryphal — read for example of life and instruction of manners |
| catholic | canonical (deuterocanonical; includes the Letter of Jeremiah as chapter 6 in some editions) |
| protestant | non-canonical |
| eastern orthodox | canonical (anagignoskomena) |
| oriental orthodox | canonical |
Real echoes only: each one attested, none invented
What the New Testament has made of it
Paul asks "who shall ascend into heaven?... who shall descend into the deep?" while reworking Deuteronomy 30, but the specific move of asking who will go up or down to fetch wisdom itself has its closest known parallel in Baruch's wisdom poem, where the same question is asked of Wisdom rather than the commandment. Paul applies to Christ what Baruch applies to God's own wisdom.
Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (1989)
1 threads into the 66
Its connections into Scripture
Baruch says Wisdom "appeared on earth and lived among humankind" (3:38), identifying her with "the book of the commandments of God, and the law that endures forever" (4:1). John 1 takes this Wisdom-Torah-on-earth trajectory and identifies it with Jesus: "the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us." The conceptual lineage Baruch 3 → John 1 is part of the broader Wisdom-to-Logos Christological development.
Reception history, never our confession
What the church has made of it
Early Christian readers heard the wisdom poem's line that Wisdom "afterward appeared upon earth, and lived among men" as pointing toward the incarnation, part of a broader Jewish and early Christian habit of hearing God's wisdom as a figure who comes down to dwell with people.
Chapter 6, the Epistle of Jeremy, was also read on its own as a stand-alone tract against idol worship, its bluntness making it a useful teaching text quite apart from the rest of Baruch.
The book has been printed in the KJV Apocrypha since 1611, and continues to be read in the Roman Catholic lectionary and in Orthodox worship as part of the Jeremiah corpus.
The voices
What the teachers have said
“And the Book of Baruch, his scribe, which is neither read nor found among the Hebrews, we have omitted.”
Every claim above rests on these
Where this comes from
- Bruce M. Metzger, An Introduction to the Apocrypha (Oxford, 1957)
- David A. deSilva, Introducing the Apocrypha: Message, Context, and Significance (Baker Academic)
- R. H. Charles, ed., The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, vol. 1: Apocrypha (Oxford, 1913)