Jeremiahchapter 45
5 verses · KJVJeremiah book hub →
Key verse
And seekest thou great things for thyself? seek them not: for, behold, I will bring evil upon all flesh, saith the Lord: but thy life will I give unto thee for a prey in all places whither thou goest.
It stands in scene B of the chapter, verses 4 to 5.
The chapter
Chapter summary
A short private word, dated back to the year Baruch wrote the first scroll, and placed here like a postscript to a scribe's whole career. Baruch had said, Woe is me now, for Jehovah hath added sorrow to my pain; I am weary with my groaning and find no rest. God answers first with his own grief (what I have built I am breaking down, what I have planted I am plucking up, this whole land) and then with a question that has steadied ambitious servants ever since: 'Seekest thou great things for thyself? seek them not.' Evil is coming upon all flesh; but in every place Baruch goes, his life will be given him for a prey.
Context
Prophecy · Jeremiah · Jeremiah overview
Where the chapter sits
Jeremiah 45 falls in Jerusalem's fall narrated (chapters 34–45). Zedekiah's vacillation; Jehoiakim burns the scroll (36); siege and fall (39); assassination of Gedaliah; flight to Egypt with the remnant.
Before it: Book of consolation, chapters 30–33. After it: Oracles against the nations, chapters 46–51.
The whole shape of Jeremiah→The world behind this chapter
Jeremiah 45The history
This is the shortest chapter in the book and it is addressed to one person. Baruch son of Neriah has just written a scroll from dictation covering twenty-three years of preaching, and the year is the year of Carchemish, when Babylon became the power that would end his country.
Baruch came from a family of standing. His brother Seraiah served as a senior officer in Zedekiah's court, which suggests a scribal family close to government, and makes his choice of employer look like a career thrown away.
The rest of the history, and what it meant to them
His complaint is quoted: woe is me, for the LORD has added sorrow to my pain; I am weary with my groaning and I find no rest. That is a man who has spent weeks writing out the destruction of everything he knows.
The answer is bracing rather than soothing. What I have built I am breaking down, and what I have planted I am plucking up, that is, the whole land, and do you seek great things for yourself? Do not seek them. The one promise given is that his life will be given to him as a prize of war, the phrase used for what a soldier walks away with when everything else is lost.
What it meant to them
The first readers of this chapter had it placed here, at the close of the Jeremiah narrative, as a kind of signature. The assistant gets his own oracle in the book he wrote.
The word to him is the one every ordinary person in a collapsing country needed. In a season when God is pulling down what he built, ambition is the wrong instrument. Your life, kept, is the whole of the promise, and it is enough.
Sources cited
- John Bright, Jeremiah (Anchor Bible)
- Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament: Jeremiah
A. Baruch's Complaint: Woe Is Me Now, I Find No Rest
1. (vv. 1-3)
a.The word that Jeremiah the prophet spake unto Baruch the son of Neriah, when he had written these words in a book at the mouth of Jeremiah, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim: The chapter closes the Baruch narrative with a flashback to the very scroll-dictation of chapter 36, placed here at the book's end as a kind of epilogue to the scribe's long service. Baruch's own complaint is recorded without softening, the Lord hath added grief to my sorrow, I fainted in my sighing, and I find no rest, exhaustion given its own verse the way the prophet's own confessions were given theirs across chapters 11 through 20. The bench reads the dating itself as deliberate, the book's final personal word reaching back to its darkest writing scene rather than following strict chronology.
Jeremiah 45:1, 1 voiceWhat preachers and commentators have said about these verses, in their own words.
Jeremiah 45:1
“The word that Jeremiah - spake unto Baruch - This is another instance of shameless transposition. This discourse was delivered in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, several years before Jerusalem was taken by the Chaldeans. It is a simple appendage to chap. 36, and there it should have been inserted.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Jeremiah 45:2, 2 voices
Jeremiah 45:2
“The Lord comforts Baruch, who was serving the prophet, writing the oracles, complaining about the hardships and feeling vexed. He commands him to bear nobly his life full of pain. He says, "If I am now uprooting, cutting off and handing over to all sorts …”
Theodoret of Cyrus· written before 458· ON JEREMIAH 8:45patristic
Jeremiah 45:2
“Thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel, unto thee, O Baruch. Whom he knew by name, had a great regard for, and honours with this prophecy; and, being an Israelite, both in a literal and spiritual sense, he addresses him as the God of Israel, and as being his covenant God; in whom he should put his trust, and from whom he might expect safety and protection in the worst of times; and to whose sovereign will, in all the dispensations of his providence, he ought to have humbly and patiently submitted.”
Jeremiah 45:3, 3 voices
Jeremiah 45:3
“Grief to my sorrow - Baruch’s sorrow is caused by the sinfulness of the Jewish nation, to which God adds grief by showing how severely it will be punished. I fainted in - Or, “am weary with” Psa 6:6.”
Jeremiah 45:3
“I find no rest - Upon Baruch's reading the prophecies both he and Jeremiah were advised to hide themselves. This probably disturbed Baruch, and made him lament his condition.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Jeremiah 45:3
“The consternation that poor Baruch was in when he was sought for by the king's messengers and obliged to hide his head, and the notice which God took of it. He cried out, Woe is me now!”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
B. Seek Not Great Things for Thyself: Thy Life as a Prize
1. (vv. 4-5)
a.Thus shalt thou say unto him, The Lord saith thus; Behold, that which I have built will I break down: The answer does not exempt Baruch from the book's larger verdict, the same Lord breaking down what he built and plucking up what he planted across the whole land, so the scribe's private grief is set inside a catastrophe too large to be about him alone. The rebuke, seekest thou great things for thyself, seek them not, reads to the bench as gentle rather than harsh, refusing Baruch nothing but ambition in a burning house. The closing promise, thy life will I give unto thee for a prey in all places whither thou goest, repeats word for word the promise made to Ebed-melech at 39:18 and to Jeremiah himself, binding the scribe's safety to his master's and to the Ethiopian's.
Jeremiah 45:5, 3 voices
Jeremiah 45:5
“And seekest thou great things for thyself? - Nothing better can be expected of this people: thy hopes in reference to them are vain. Expect no national amendment, till national judgments have taken place. And as for any benefit to thyself, think it sufficient that God has determined to preserve thy life amidst all these dangers. But thy life will I give unto thee for a prey - This is a proverbial expression. We have met with it before, Jer 21:9, Jer 38:2, Jer 39:18; and it appears to have this meaning.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Jeremiah 45:5
“But the reason I have stated ought to be borne in mind, that this book we have now in our hands was not written by Jeremiah himself, but that it contains collected summaries, afterwards formed into one volume. Here is told us a special prophecy concerning Baruch, who, as we know, was the Prophet's scribe, and not only his scribe or amanuensis, but also his disciple.”
John Calvin· Commentaries (1554)reformed
Jeremiah 45:5
“Dost thou expect to be rich and honourable and to make a figure now? "It is absurd for thee to be now painting thy own cabin. Canst thou expect to be high when all are brought low, to be full when all about thee are empty?" To seek ourselves more than the public welfare, especially to seek great things to ourselves when the public is in danger, is very unbecoming Israelites.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Jeremiah 45. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826); Albert Barnes; Carl Friedrich Keil, The Prophecies of Jeremiah; John Calvin, Commentaries (1554); John Gill; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765); Matthew Henry and Theodoret of Cyrus, ON JEREMIAH 8:45.
Keep studying
On this page