Suffering and comfort

Comfort Written in Fire: Jeremiah 36 and Obedience in Suffering

When the prophet is forced into hiding and the scribe takes up the pen, God's word still seeks a hearing in the midst of suffering.

BibleVibe Editorial5 min read
Translation：ESV
Jeremiah 36:1-20
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In the fourth year of King Jehoiakim son of Josiah of Judah, this word came to Jeremiah from GOD: Get a scroll and write upon it all the words that I have spoken to you—concerning Israel and Judah and all the nations—from the time I first spoke to you in the days of Josiah to this day. Perhaps when the House of Judah hear of all the disasters I intend to bring upon them, they will turn back from their wicked ways, and I will pardon their iniquity and their sin. So Jeremiah called Baruch son of Neriah; and Baruch wrote down in the scroll, at Jeremiah’s dictation, all the words that GOD had spoken to him. Jeremiah instructed Baruch, “I am in hiding; I cannot go to the House of GOD. But you go and read aloud GOD’s words from the scroll that you wrote at my dictation, to all the people in the House of GOD on a fast day; thus you will also be reading them to all the Judeans who come in from the towns. Perhaps their entreaty will be accepted by GOD, if they turn back from their wicked ways. For great is the anger and wrath with which GOD has threatened this people.” Baruch son of Neriah did just as the prophet Jeremiah had instructed him, about reading GOD’s words from the scroll in the House of GOD. In the ninth month of the fifth year of King Jehoiakim son of Josiah of Judah, all the people in Jerusalem and all the people coming from Judah proclaimed a fast before GOD in Jerusalem. It was then that Baruch—in the chamber of Gemariah son of Shaphan the scribe, in the upper court, near the new gateway of the House of GOD—read the words of Jeremiah from the scroll to all the people in the House of GOD. Micaiah son of Gemariah son of Shaphan heard all the words of GOD [read] from the scroll, and he went down to the king’s palace, to the chamber of the scribe. There he found all the officials in session: Elishama the scribe, Delaiah son of Shemaiah, Elnathan son of Achbor, Gemariah son of Shaphan, Zedekiah son of Hananiah, and all the other officials. And Micaiah told them all that he had heard as Baruch read from the scroll in the hearing of the people. Then all the officials sent Jehudi son of Nethaniah son of Shelemiah son of Cushi to say to Baruch, “Take that scroll from which you read to the people, and come along!” And Baruch took the scroll and came to them. They said, “Sit down and read it to us.” And Baruch read it to them. When they heard all these words, they turned to each other in fear; and they said to Baruch, “We must report all this to the king.” And they questioned Baruch further, “Tell us how you wrote down all these words that he spoke.” He answered them, “He himself recited all those words to me, and I would write them down in the scroll in ink.” The officials said to Baruch, “Go into hiding, you and Jeremiah. Don’t let anyone know where you are!” And they went to the king in the court, after leaving the scroll in the chamber of the scribe Elishama. And they reported all these matters to the king. The king sent Jehudi to get the scroll and he fetched it from the chamber of the scribe Elishama. Jehudi read it to the king and to all the officials who were in attendance on the king. Since it was the ninth month, the king was sitting in the winter house, with a fire burning in the brazier before him. And every time Jehudi read three or four columns, [the king] would cut it up with a scribe’s knife and throw it into the fire in the brazier, until the entire scroll was consumed by the fire in the brazier. Yet the king and all his courtiers who heard all these words showed no fear and did not tear their garments; moreover, Elnathan, Delaiah, and Gemariah begged the king not to burn the scroll, but he would not listen to them. The king ordered Jerahmeel, the king’s son, and Seraiah son of Azriel, and Shelemiah son of Abdeel to arrest the scribe Baruch and the prophet Jeremiah. But GOD hid them. The word of GOD came to Jeremiah after the king had burned the scroll containing the words that Baruch had written at Jeremiah’s dictation: Get yourself another scroll, and write upon it the same words that were in the first scroll that was burned by King Jehoiakim of Judah. And concerning King Jehoiakim of Judah you shall say: Thus said GOD: You burned that scroll, saying, “How dare you write in it that the king of Babylon will come and destroy this land and cause human and animal to cease from it?” Assuredly, thus said GOD concerning King Jehoiakim of Judah: He shall not have any of his line sitting on the throne of David; and his own corpse shall be left exposed to the heat by day and the cold by night. And I will punish him and his offspring and his courtiers for their iniquity; I will bring on them and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem and on all the citizenry of Judah all the disasters of which I have warned them—but they would not listen. So Jeremiah got another scroll and gave it to the scribe Baruch son of Neriah. And at Jeremiah’s dictation, he wrote in it the whole text of the scroll that King Jehoia

Jeremiah 36:1-20 sets the stage for one of the most dramatic confrontations in the Old Testament. God commands Jeremiah to write, Jeremiah is barred from the temple, Baruch the scribe becomes his voice, and the scroll travels from the chamber of Shaphan's son to the king's court. Suffering here is not silence. It is the painful redirection of prophetic ministry through a faithful amanuensis, and the comfort is found precisely in the fact that the word of God will not be silenced by human hostility.

📖 Jeremiah
🕰️ Late Kingdom of Judah, c. 605–604 BC📍 Jerusalem📍 First Temple
Narration

Historical and Literary Context

Jeremiah 36 places us in the fourth and then the fifth year of King Jehoiakim of Judah, a reign marked by political expediency, idolatry, and the suppression of prophetic truth. The opening dating is significant: it pins the prophet's suffering to a real, measurable historical moment. Jehoiakim had been installed by Pharaoh Necho of Egypt after the battle of Carchemish (605 BC), and he would later become a vassal of Babylon. Jerusalem, the temple, and the surrounding countryside form the stage on which this small drama unfolds. Jeremiah has been preaching for decades, from the days of Josiah through the present reign, and the accumulation of unheeded warning has become its own kind of suffering. The text says plainly that God speaks to Jeremiah in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, and the scroll is read publicly in the ninth month of the fifth year—so a year of composition and proclamation passes between the divine command and the public reading. The people of Judah and Jerusalem have proclaimed a fast. Fasts in the prophetic period were often called in response to crisis: drought, invasion, oracles of doom. The fact that the fast is already underway when Baruch reads the scroll suggests that a vague spiritual anxiety is in the air, but no one has yet heard the full weight of Jeremiah's accumulated warning. The chamber of Gemariah son of Shaphan, in the upper court near the new gateway of the house of God, is a precise architectural detail. The Shaphan family had a long association with reform: Shaphan himself had read the book of the law to Josiah and had overseen the temple renovation (2 Kings 22). His descendants are now hosting the public reading of another scroll that threatens the establishment. The new gateway is a later addition, and the upper court is a public enough space to allow a real audience. The gathering of officials in the scribe's chamber—Elishama the scribe, Delaiah, Elnathan, Gemariah, Zedekiah—an elite group with access to the king, shows how the scroll will quickly move from the temple precincts to the corridors of power. The geography of this chapter is therefore the geography of mediation: the prophet is hidden, the scribe speaks, the princes hear, and the king will soon be summoned to react.

Between the Upper Court and the Royal Palace

Jerusalem during the prophetic exile era, centered on the Davidic kingdom and the first Temple, when prophets like Jeremiah confronted national suffering and divine judgment.

Suffering Does Not Silence the Word

Jeremiah 36 sets up a profound theological contrast between suffering and speech. The prophet is in hiding. He has been forbidden, by circumstances or by opponents, to enter the house of God himself. Yet the first thing God says to him is not a word of rescue but a word of commission: get a scroll and write. Suffering, in this chapter, is not absence. It is the very condition under which obedience becomes more creative. Jeremiah cannot speak, so he dictates. He cannot enter the temple, so he sends a scribe. He cannot reach the fast, so he trusts that the public fast will gather an audience for Baruch. The chapter also reveals the strange comfort that God offers in the midst of suffering. The comfort is not that the suffering ends. It is that the suffering is not wasted. God says that the scroll is written so that perhaps the house of Judah will hear of all the disasters, turn from their wicked ways, and receive pardon. The word 'perhaps' (Hebrew 'ulay') is striking: it is the same word used in earlier passages where the possibility of repentance is held open. It is not a denial of divine sovereignty but an acknowledgment that repentance is real, that human response matters, and that God himself acts through patient invitation rather than coercion. The repeated logic of the chapter is: write, read, pray, perhaps they will turn. Suffering is therefore reframed as a setting for intercessory hope. Jeremiah suffers not because he has failed but because he has been faithful, and his suffering becomes the engine of one last pleading invitation. Baruch, by contrast, is an almost invisible figure. He is not given a vision. He is given a task. He writes at dictation, he reads aloud, he does exactly as the prophet instructed. In a passage saturated with kings and officials, the unnamed hero is the obedient scribe. This is its own form of comfort: the word of God does not depend on the brilliance of the preacher or the safety of the prophet. It travels through the careful, faithful repetition of someone who simply does what he is told. The closing verses of the pericope (we only glimpse the beginning of the chain) lead to the princes' reaction: they will hear, they will be afraid, and they will report to the king. Suffering is therefore not the end of the chapter. It is the doorway through which the word marches into the royal court.

Faithful Scribes in the Middle of Suffering

How do we live this text? The first application is to recognize that suffering often places us in the position of Jeremiah rather than Baruch. We may be hidden, marginalized, unable to enter the public spaces where we once served. The chapter teaches that a hidden season is not a wasted season. The command to write is just as real as the command to speak. Many of the most enduring ministries of the word have been composed in rooms of sorrow, in hospital beds, in exile, in prison cells. The second application is to notice the people God uses along the way. Jeremiah's ministry in this chapter is carried by Baruch, by Gemariah, by Micaiah, and (in the verses that follow) by the courageous officials who hide the scroll from the king's fury. The comfort of the suffering church is that it is never alone. God weaves networks of faithfulness around the hurt. Look for the Baruchs in your life. Be one for someone else. The third application is to take the phrase 'perhaps they will turn' as a commission. We are not guaranteed that our suffering will produce visible repentance. We are commanded to offer the word anyway. Prayers, testimonies, letters written in tears—these are scrolls in the hand of God. Write them. Send them. Trust that the divine purpose in them is not wasted. Finally, in a time when public proclamation is often restricted by hostility, sickness, or distance, the chapter validates smaller, quieter forms of witness: a faithful reading, a careful transcription, a hand-delivered scroll. The word of God travels through such channels as readily as through temples. The suffering Christian is invited to keep writing, keep reading, keep handing on the text, and to trust that somewhere a fast-day crowd is listening.

Reflection

There is a strange comfort in the image of Jeremiah hiding while Baruch reads. It suggests that the suffering of the messenger does not diminish the message. In fact, the chapter almost reverses our expectations: the more hidden the prophet, the more visible the word. Perhaps this is the hidden principle of Christian suffering. We often assume that what we can no longer do publicly has been lost to the kingdom. Jeremiah 36 will not let us assume that. It insists that God is still writing, still dictating, still sending scrolls through faithful hands, even when the prophetic voice itself is silenced. The shut-in becomes the send-out. The hidden becomes the heard. The text also insists that the comfort offered in suffering is not the absence of conflict but the insertion of the sufferer into a larger pattern of witness. Jeremiah's scroll will be burned, but a new scroll will be written. The king will be judged, but the word will remain. The princes will be afraid, but the people will be given one more chance to turn. The same pattern shows up across redemptive history: the servant suffers, the word is hidden in the heart, the scroll is read in the upper room, and the Spirit carries it where flesh cannot. Theologically, we are bound to ask whether Jesus himself is not the final Jeremiah. Hidden in the home in Nazareth, hidden in the wilderness, hidden in the borrowed tomb, and yet through every hidden moment the word is being written, dictated, and finally read aloud in a language every nation can understand. Suffering and comfort, in this chapter, are not opposites. They are the two hands of the same divine scribe, holding the pen that traces the story of redemption.

FAQ

Why is Jeremiah in hiding, and yet still ministering?

Hiding likely reflects the hostility of Jehoiakim's regime, but God's word does not pause. The prophet is hidden, the scribe is sent, and faithful ministry continues through suffering.

What role does Baruch play in this passage?

Baruch is the faithful scribe and voice: he writes Jeremiah's dictation and reads it aloud in the temple. The chapter shapes him as a model of obedient endurance in suffering.

What does the word 'perhaps' reveal about God's heart?

The word reveals God's genuine openness to repentance. He transforms the prophet's suffering into an invitation, writing the scroll so that perhaps the people will turn.

Why is the location in the Shaphan family's quarters so significant?

The Shaphan family had earlier carried out Josiah's reform (cf. 2 Kings 22). Now Shaphan's son hosts the public reading of Jeremiah's scroll, continuing that reforming legacy.

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