translated by O. C. Whitehouse, in R. H. Charles's Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament (1913)
Baruch is a short penitential and wisdom book set in the mouth of Jeremiah's scribe, writing to Jerusalem from the Babylonian exile. It opens with a communal confession: Israel has sinned, its punishment is just, and the exiles ask the people left in Jerusalem to pray for them and for their captors. From confession the book turns to praise — a hymn to Wisdom, identified with the Torah, as the one possession Israel can never be stripped of, wherever it is scattered. It closes with a poem of consolation in which Jerusalem, personified as a grieving mother, is told to take off her mourning and watch for her children's return, while the surrounding hills are made low so that the road home lies open before them. Scholarship since the nineteenth century has read the book's language of ruin and captivity as reaching past the Babylonian setting toward the far more immediate catastrophe of Jerusalem's fall to Rome in 70 CE.
Introductory Note (1913, O. C. Whitehouse)
Short Account of the Book
The Book of Baruch, whose Greek version is found in all editions of the Septuagint, forms one of a series of writings attached to the name of Jeremiah's secretary; brief characterizations of these companion works can be found in Charles's edition of the Apocalypse of Baruch. As this introduction will show, the tragic events of 597 (or 586) BC, which heralded the Babylonian exile, form only a thin historical drapery clothing the far greater tragedy of the Jewish people in 70 CE. It is now generally accepted by recent critics that Nebuchadnezzar (Nabuchodonosor in the text) and Belshazzar (Baltasar) stand for Vespasian and Titus, and that other correspondences between the Babylonian conquest as portrayed here and the Roman conquest will reveal themselves on closer study. Of the various solutions proposed since Grüneberg's work of 1797 down to Ewald, Kneucker, and Schürer, none satisfies the conditions of the problem as well as this one — substantially the position taken by Kneucker and Schürer.
Contents
The book's contents may be briefly summarized. In i.1–14, Baruch writes the words of this book in the fifth year and reads them aloud to Jechonias and his fellow exiles in Babylon. They weep, take up a collection of money, and send it to the High Priest in Jerusalem with a message: the money is meant for the purchase of offerings on the altar, together with a request for prayer on behalf of Nebuchadnezzar and his son — whom the exiles intend to obey loyally — and on their own behalf, since they have sinned against God. This book of confession is to be read publicly on the feast-day in God's house.
In i.15–iii.8 the confession itself follows. God is just; Israel's punishment is the fruit of its own sin and disobedience (i.15–ii.12). A prayer for divine mercy follows (ii.13–iii.8): God's earlier words through Jeremiah are recalled, especially his command to serve the king of Babylon. Disobedience to that command brought calamity on Israel and the destruction of the Jerusalem temple (ii.21–26). Divine assurances follow that captivity will bring repentance and, in time, a restoration to and rule over Palestine (ii.27–35). The section closes with a cry to God not to remember Israel's past iniquities (iii.1–8).
From this point the book moves from prose into poetry. In iii.9–iv.4, in the manner of Hebrew Wisdom literature, comes a praise of God's laws of life: neglect of them is the cause of Israel's calamities and exile. Where is wisdom to be found? Not among the great and powerful rulers of the earth, nor even among those reputed wise (iii.15–28). No one has found it in heaven or on earth; only God, the all-wise Creator, possesses it, and he has given it to Jacob as the eternal Law that leads to life (iii.29–iv.1). The section ends with a brief exhortation to Jacob to lay hold of Wisdom and walk in its light, never surrendering the honor of this unique possession to any other people.
From this exhortation the book turns to a very different kind of song: strains of lamentation and comfort in the manner of the Deutero-Isaiah (iv.5–v.9), with "Be comforted" as a recurring refrain. Jerusalem addresses her children (iv.5–29): you have been sold among the nations, but not to be destroyed; you were given over to the enemy because you angered God by past transgression. A lament follows over the banishment of her children and their harsh treatment at foreign hands (iv.10–17). But God, who brought the calamity, will also bring deliverance; bear his wrath patiently, for you will soon see your enemies' destruction and joy will replace sorrow (iv.18–29). Then comes God's own word of comfort to Jerusalem (iv.30–v.9): calamity is pronounced on the cities that rejoiced at her fall; fire will come upon them and they will become the haunt of demons. Jerusalem is told to lift up her eyes and see her children streaming home from east and west, to put off her garment of sorrow and put on a robe of salvation and a crown of glory. Her former enemies will themselves bring her children back to her; mountain and hill will be made low and the valleys filled so that Israel may return, and the woods and fragrant trees will give Israel their shade as God brings his people home in joy.
Composite Character
The book's composite character is evident from this survey. The prose of the first two sections stands in marked contrast to the poetic sections that follow, both in content and in attitude toward Israel's conquerors. In i.11–12 the exiles are told to pray for the life of Nebuchadnezzar and his son, "and the Lord will give us strength, and lighten our eyes, and we shall live under the shadow of Nabuchodonosor king of Babylon" — following the same tradition found in Jeremiah and Ezekiel toward Babylon. So too ii.20–24 ascribes Israel's calamities to its refusal to obey the prophetic command to "bow your shoulders to serve the king of Babylon." But when we turn to the closing poem, the attitude toward Israel's conquerors is one of embittered subjugation shading into open hostility, closer to the spirit of the late-exilic oracles against Babylon in Jeremiah and Isaiah: "Thine enemy hath persecuted thee; but shortly thou shalt see his destruction, and shalt tread upon their necks" (iv.25). The peoples who afflicted Israel and rejoiced at her fall are told they will themselves feel dread and grief.
The three sections also draw on different scriptural sources. Chapters i.11–iii.8 cite Jeremiah, Daniel, and Deuteronomy freely, with the confession in i.15–ii.17 especially indebted to whole clauses of Daniel ix.7–19. The Wisdom section, iii.9–iv.4, draws instead on Proverbs, Job, the Deutero-Isaiah, and Ecclesiasticus xxiv. The final section, iv.5–v.9, is very largely based on the Deutero-Isaiah, with its concluding portion evidently inspired by the Psalms of Solomon xi.
Critical Investigation of the Documents
We arrive, then, at the conclusion that the Book of Baruch is composed of three distinct literary strands, each bearing the marks of a different hand: (A) a prose document in i.1–iii.8; (B) a poetical document in the manner of Wisdom literature in iii.9–iv.4; (C) a further document of exhortation and comfort in iv.5–v.9.
The opening verses of document A present real difficulties. The "fifth year" of verse 2 is reckoned, on the natural reading, from the destruction of Jerusalem in 587–586 BC — yet the offerings mentioned in verse 10 sit awkwardly with a temple already in ruins, which has led some critics (following Eichhorn) to reckon instead from the earlier capture of Jerusalem in 597 BC, when Jehoiachin was taken captive but city and temple were left standing. Neither dating is free of difficulty, and it remains uncertain whether Baruch's presence in Babylonia — for which the Hebrew Bible itself offers no direct evidence — should be pressed. More telling is the fact that Baltasar is called the son of Nebuchadnezzar (i.11–12), exactly as in the Book of Daniel (v.2, 13, 18, 21) — a historical confusion known to be mistaken, since the historical Belshazzar was son of Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon. The text of verse 2 is also uncertain, lacking any name or number for the month, which is strange given that months were regularly numbered in exilic and post-exilic Hebrew usage. And the opening verses hang together badly: thirteen verses of narrative intervene before "the words of the book" that verse 1 has promised actually begin; verse 4 reads as an editorial expansion of the verse before it; and verse 8, as Kneucker showed, stands out of its natural place, its subject being Baruch (last mentioned in verse 3) rather than Joakim.
Document B (iii.9–iv.4), built on the Wisdom literature of Proverbs and Job and citing Ecclesiasticus xxiv.8, is a message of comfort and exhortation addressed mainly to the exiles who have long dwelt "in the enemies' land" (iii.10) — that is, to the Jewish Diaspora generally. Their calamities stem from having abandoned the fountain of Wisdom, the way of life revealed in the Torah, which nonetheless remains their eternal and inalienable possession. This section forms a coherent whole in its own right, and it is clearly the "book" to which i.1 and i.3a refer — these verses, not verse 2, form its true and original preface. Verse 2 more probably belonged to the introduction of document A instead, since its reference to the burning of Jerusalem connects it with ii.26. A later redactor combined A and B into a single work, which is considered first below; C is treated separately afterward.
A Hebrew Original of Documents A and B
Older critics such as Grotius, Eichhorn, Bertholdt, Havernick, Keil, and Nöldeke held that the Book of Baruch was composed in Greek throughout, but this view has been abandoned by nearly all recent scholars. Reusch, Ewald, Hitzig, Fritzsche, and especially Kneucker — who in his elaborate 1879 study Das Buch Baruch went so far as to reconstruct the presumed Hebrew original in full — argue for a Hebrew original underlying the whole book. Schürer, following Fritzsche, doubts this for the latter portion (iii.9–v.9) specifically, holding that this section was composed in Greek from the start; Reuss and Hilgenfeld take a similar view, and Bevan inclines the same way. Marshall has argued, from a comparison of the Greek against the Syriac and Latin versions, that iii.9–iv.4 was originally composed in Aramaic rather than Hebrew; the present writer has examined Marshall's nine supporting examples individually and finds most of them equally or better explained on a Hebrew basis.
Nearly all living scholars — Marshall and Charles among them — agree that document A (i.2, 3b–iii.8) was composed in Hebrew, and in the present writer's judgment a fairly strong case can also be made for document B (i.1, 3a, iii.9–iv.4). The strongly marked Hebraisms of the Greek text point clearly to a Hebrew original: the transliterated manna of i.10 (properly read manaa in several manuscripts) simply reproduces the Hebrew word for "gift" or "oblation," and the phrase "concerning sin" in the same verse covers the Hebrew term for a sin-offering exactly as in Leviticus. Other significant Hebraisms recur throughout, along with the relative constructions so characteristic of Hebrew syntax (as in ii.4, 13, and iii.8), which belong naturally to the prose of document A rather than to the poetry of B. For document A specifically, the hypothesis of a Hebrew original is put almost beyond doubt by a marginal note in the Syro-Hexaplar version at Baruch i.17 and ii.3, remarking that certain material there is "not recorded in the Hebrew" — implying that the rest was understood to have such a Hebrew basis to check against.
The Greek Original of Document C
With document C (iv.5–v.9) the situation is quite different: it is a unified composition, not a series of separate poems as Rothstein argued, and the evidence here consistently points to Greek as its original language. The strongest support comes from close parallels between the Greek of Psalm of Solomon xi and Baruch iv.36–v.9 — verse after verse of the two texts run in near-identical Greek phrasing, down to shared vocabulary and word order, of a closeness that is best explained by direct dependence rather than by both drawing independently on a lost Hebrew source; and the direction of dependence runs from the Psalms of Solomon to Baruch, not the reverse. Supporting evidence comes from the Syriac version, which for documents A and B shows signs of consulting a Hebrew text but for document C relies solely on the Greek — the Greek word for "robe," for instance, is simply carried over untranslated into the Syriac at iv.20 and v.1. The Greek phrasing at points (such as iv.28's "return and seek him ten times more") is difficult to render convincingly back into idiomatic Hebrew. And the section's Old Testament citations follow the Septuagint rather than the underlying Hebrew text, especially in its borrowings from Deuteronomy.
The General Editor appends a dissenting note here, arguing on renewed study that chapter v specifically shows signs of being a translation from Hebrew after all, chiefly on the strength of a Hebraism in v.6 ("as on a royal throne," rather than the more natural Greek "as a royal throne") that is difficult to explain except as a mistranslation of a Hebrew idiom. On this view, the close resemblance between Baruch iv.36–v.9 and Psalm of Solomon xi is best explained as two Greek translations of two different recensions of the same underlying Hebrew psalm, rather than as one text's direct borrowing from the other.
Date and Authorship
We are now in a position to weigh questions of date and authorship for documents A, B, and C both separately and in their combined, redacted form. For document A, the determining factor is its close relationship to Daniel ix.7–19, together with the historical confusion the two texts share regarding Belshazzar. Some critics, including Ewald, have argued that Baruch is in fact the earlier of the two, assigning it to the closing years of the Persian empire; but it has seemed clear to nearly all except Roman Catholic critics that the document must have been composed long after the Babylonian exile itself, since the same historical confusion found in Daniel could only have arisen once the events of the Babylonian empire had become a blurred and distant tradition.
Some have located the document's true setting in 63 BC, when Pompey invaded Judaea and captured Jerusalem, or in the following decades of Roman clemency toward the Jews under Julius Caesar. But the evidence accumulates most heavily in favor of the great Jewish war against Rome of 66–70 CE and its aftermath. The complaisant relationship urged toward "Nabuchodonosor" and "Baltasar" — whom Israel is commanded to serve loyally — closely parallels the recorded attitude of the leading Pharisees, and of Josephus himself, toward Rome in this period. The sufferings described (great plagues, the eating of children's flesh, the bones of kings cast out of their tombs) closely match Josephus's own account of the siege of Jerusalem, down to specific incidents such as the numbers of those who died of famine. And the clear reference to the temple's destruction by fire in i.2 and ii.26 fits the events of 70 CE, not the desecration (without burning) of 63 BC.
Document B does not name a specific historical situation, but its message — that Israel's true treasure, the Wisdom enshrined in the Torah, remains hers even though her temporal inheritance has passed under foreign rule — reads naturally as a consolation for the years following the fall of the temple in 70 CE. It is probable that both A and B arose from the circle of Johanan ben Zaccai, the first head of the rabbinic school at Jabneh after 70 CE: a man of peace who had counseled submission to Rome during the war, whose pupils mourned the temple's fall as for the dead, and who was renowned as a devoted student of the Torah. This suggestion, made independently by Professor Burkitt and Mr. I. Abrahams, fits the character of both documents well.
Document C, by contrast, is marked throughout by notes of burning resentment toward Rome rather than compliance, and evidently reflects the same background of the Flavian war, but somewhat further removed from it in time and temper — the wounds are recent but the resentment has had time to harden into hope of reversal. A date around 78 CE, or possibly somewhat later, seems reasonably probable, though no fixed terminus can be established with confidence.
Redaction of the Documents
There is strong evidence that document A was composed in Hebrew, and reasonably strong evidence for the same conclusion regarding document B. Their combination into a single Hebrew scroll probably followed not many years after their separate composition. In the pervasive gloom that followed the catastrophe of 70 CE, consolatory and apocalyptic writings met a real and widespread need, appealing especially to those disposed to accept the inevitable — the cosmopolitan, Rome-accommodating wing of Judaism rather than the party of armed resistance. The underlying theological answer offered by both A and B, echoed also in C, was that Israel's calamity was a chastisement inflicted by God for its own sin.
A genuine historical puzzle remains in i.1–14: how can the sacrificial offerings mentioned there (verses 6–12) be reconciled with a temple already destroyed in 70 CE? The most probable answer, following Josephus's own testimony in Against Apion, is that some form of sacrificial cultus — offerings made on behalf of, though not equal in kind to, the imperial power — persisted for a time even after the temple's destruction, before ceasing altogether in the following century. The Greek translation of the Hebrew original of A and B was probably made near the close of the first century or soon after the start of the second; the terminus is fixed by the fact that Irenaeus, writing around 172 CE, quotes Baruch iv.36–v.9 as the words of Jeremiah, and Athenagoras, writing slightly later, cites iii.35 as the words of an inspired prophet.
The Versions
Among the versions, the Greek came first and secured the book's wider circulation, first among the scattered Jewish communities of the empire and later among Christian readers. Scholars are divided over whether the Greek translation is the work of one hand or two; the difference in style most often cited between i.1–iii.8 and the remainder of the book is adequately explained by the fact that the latter portion, unlike the former, was composed in Greek from the outset rather than translated, which alone would produce noticeable stylistic differences. The Greek translator of document A shows clear familiarity with the Theodotion version of Daniel. The chief Greek manuscripts, in order of importance, are Codex Vaticanus (fourth century), Codex Alexandrinus (fifth century), Codex Marchalianus, and Codex Venetus, along with some twenty-two cursive manuscripts; neither the Sinaitic codex nor Codex Ephraemi Syri contains Baruch.
A Syriac version, next in importance to the Greek, must predate the mid-fourth-century writer Ephrem Syrus, who cites the book by name. This survives in two forms: the version printed in Walton's Polyglot (as amended by Paul de Lagarde), on which the present commentary chiefly relies, and the separate Syro-Hexaplar translation made by Bishop Paul of Tela in 617 CE, based directly on Origen's Hexapla. Careful comparison shows that the Walton/Lagarde Syriac is no mere slavish rendering of the Greek: in the sections corresponding to documents A and B it shows repeated signs of independent access to the underlying Hebrew text, while in document C, where no Hebrew original ever existed, it depends solely on the Greek. On the strength of internal evidence — including its substitution of a military helmet for a diadem, and a tent for a height, in chapter v — the Syriac version's origin is best placed around the time of the Bar Cochba revolt (132 CE and after), among the substantial Jewish population then settled in the Euphrates lands.
Two ancient Latin versions also survive: the Vetus Latina proper, which predates Jerome (since it is quoted by both Cyprian and Tertullian) and was eventually folded into the Vulgate; and a second Old Latin form first published in Rome in 1688. Jerome himself excluded Baruch, together with the Epistle of Jeremiah, from his Vulgate translation of the prophetic books, on the ground that the book was neither read nor possessed among the Hebrews of his day — a judgment that set the Latin Vulgate's textual tradition apart from the Greek Church's continued acceptance of the book. Beyond these, an Arabic version closely follows the Greek text; an Ethiopic version, based on an abbreviated form of the Greek, is preserved in Dillmann's edition; a Coptic (Sahidic) version was published in the 1870s; and an Armenian version likewise follows the Greek closely.
Influence on Christian and Jewish Literature
The book's influence on Christian literature has been considerably greater than on Jewish literature. Because Baruch was Jeremiah's secretary, early Christian writers frequently cite passages from this book as words of Jeremiah himself: Irenaeus does so explicitly for Baruch iv.36–v.9, and Clement of Alexandria for several other passages. Hippolytus notes that the Monarchian heretic Noëtus and his followers appealed to iii.35–37 in support of their Christology, while Origen — who otherwise followed the Jewish canon in excluding the Apocrypha — nonetheless cites Baruch iii.38 and iii.9–13 as though they belonged to Jeremiah's own book. Later Greek Fathers such as Athanasius, Cyril of Jerusalem, and the Council of Laodicea likewise treated Baruch as an appendix to, and effectively part of, the canonical Jeremiah, and Chrysostom regularly quotes it under Jeremiah's name.
Among Latin writers, the tradition runs the same way from Hilary of Poitiers and Ambrose onward — with the notable exception of Jerome, who, following the Hebrew canon he had studied, separated Baruch and the Epistle of Jeremiah from the prophetic book proper and excluded both from his Vulgate translation; hence neither book appears in Codex Amiatinus, the oldest surviving manuscript of the Vulgate. The Council of Trent nonetheless later recognized Baruch as part of the deuterocanonical Old Testament, while the English Bible follows the Protestant tradition of placing it among the Apocrypha.
Within Jewish literature proper, the book's later history is much more obscure. Its Hebrew original for i.1–iv.4 evidently circulated for a time among Diaspora communities in the last quarter of the first century, with the remainder published in Greek within the same period; by the early second century the whole book circulated in Greek and, somewhat later, in Aramaic among the Jewish settlements of Mesopotamia. Its evident spirit of complaisance toward Roman power in i.1–iii.8 probably did not endear it to Jewish readers after the crushing of the Bar Cochba revolt in 135 CE, and Jerome's explicit statement that in his own day the book was "not read among the Hebrews" suggests that by the fourth century it had ceased to hold any recognized place in Jewish religious use.
The Religious Ideas of the Book of Baruch
Because the book is composite in authorship, its three documents cannot be expected to present a single uniform theology, though certain features are common to all three, and certain notable absences run through the whole. In all three documents God is recognized as the absolute ruler of Israel's destiny, the source of righteousness and power. Document B naturally emphasizes God's wisdom and universal knowledge; God's mercy, which listens to the cry of his people, runs through the penitential prayer of i.15–iii.8 and is most fully developed in document C, under the influence of the Deutero-Isaiah, where divine compassion grounds the repeated call to "be of good cheer." Document C is distinguished by its preference for the divine titles "the Everlasting" and "the Holy One," while document A prefers the combination "the Lord our God," twice adding the epithet "Almighty" (iii.1, 4).
The doctrine of sin, and of suffering as its divinely appointed chastisement, runs strongly through the whole book, together with the idea that the sin of the fathers is visited upon the children — though the opposing Jewish doctrine of merit earned through the righteousness of the ancestors, prominent elsewhere in Jewish soteriology, is explicitly set aside in ii.19.
What is perhaps most striking is the book's silence on points of doctrine that loom large elsewhere in similar literature, especially by comparison with 2 Baruch, the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch. There is no trace here of the elaborate angelology, or of the sirens, liliths, and dragons, that populate that later work; only a passing, evidently borrowed reference to demons appears (iv.35). Even the Messianic hope and the eschatological expectation so prominent in 2 Baruch are conspicuously absent, and while 2 Baruch speaks explicitly of the resurrection of the righteous, our book says nothing of it — though it would go too far to say, as some have, that resurrection is positively denied in ii.17, where the language about the dead in Sheol is simply an echo of Psalm cxv.17.
The highest note in the whole book is struck by document B, in its praise of Wisdom embodied in the Torah. There is something genuinely moving in the closing verses of that section, which turn Israel's gaze away from national humiliation, from the ruined temple and the vanished pomp of its ritual, toward the eternal glory of the Wisdom enshrined in the Law — Israel's inalienable possession forever: "Turn thee, O Jacob, and take hold of it: walk toward her shining in the presence of the light thereof." We can afford to do without the grandiose imagery of apocalyptic when we stand instead in the clear sunlight of so sublime an utterance, in which the whole created universe becomes, in effect, the house of God.
Chapter 1
1 And these are the words of the book, which Baruch the son of Nerias, the son of Maaseas, 2 the son of Sedekias, the son of Asadias, the son of Helkias, wrote in Babylon, in the fifth year, and in the seventh day of the month, what time as the Chaldeans took Jerusalem, and burnt it with fire. 3 And Baruch did read the words of this book in the hearing of Jechonias the son of Joakim king of Judah, 4 and in the hearing of all the people that came to hear the book, and in the hearing of the mighty men, and of the kings' sons, and in the hearing of the elders, and in the hearing of all the people, from the least unto the greatest, even of all them that dwelt at Babylon by the river Sud. 5 And they wept, and fasted, and prayed before the Lord; 6 they made also a collection of money according to every man's power: and they sent it to Jerusalem unto Joakim the high priest, the son of Helkias, the son of Salom, 7 and to the priests, and to all the people which were found with him at Jerusalem, at the same time when he took the vessels of the house of the Lord, that had been carried out of the temple, to return them into the land of Judah, the tenth day of the month Sivan, 8 namely, silver vessels, which Sedekias the son of Josias king of Judah had made, 9 after that Nabuchodonosor king of Babylon had carried away Jechonias, and the princes, and the captives, and the mighty men, and the people of the land, from Jerusalem, and brought them unto Babylon. 10 And they said, Behold, we have sent you money; buy you therefore with the money burnt offerings, and sin offerings, and incense, and prepare an oblation, and offer upon the altar of the Lord our God; 11 and pray for the life of Nabuchodonosor king of Babylon, and for the life of Baltasar his son, that their days may be as the days of heaven above the earth: 12 and the Lord will give us strength, and lighten our eyes, and we shall live under the shadow of Nabuchodonosor king of Babylon, and under the shadow of Baltasar his son, and we shall serve them many days, and find favour in their sight. 13 Pray for us also unto the Lord our God, for we have sinned against the Lord our God; and unto this day the wrath of the Lord and his indignation is not turned from us. 14 And ye shall read this book which we have sent unto you, to make confession in the house of the Lord, upon the day of the feast and on the days of the solemn assembly.
15 And ye shall say, To the Lord our God belongeth righteousness, but unto us confusion of face, as at this day, 16 unto the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to our kings, and to our princes, and to our priests, and to our prophets, and to our fathers: 17 for that we have sinned before the Lord, 18 and disobeyed him, and have not hearkened unto the voice of the Lord our God, to walk in the commandments of the Lord that he hath set before us: 19 since the day that the Lord brought our fathers out of the land of Egypt, unto this present day, we have been disobedient unto 20 the Lord our God, and we have dealt unadvisedly in not hearkening unto his voice. Wherefore the plagues clave unto us, and the curse, which the Lord commanded Moses his servant to pronounce, in the day that he brought our fathers out of the land of Egypt, to give us a land that floweth with milk and honey, as at this day. 21 Nevertheless we hearkened not unto the voice of the Lord our God, according unto all the words of the prophets, whom he sent unto us: 22 but we walked every man in the imagination of his own wicked heart, to serve strange gods, and to do that which is evil in the sight of the Lord our God.
Chapter 2
1 Therefore the Lord hath made good his word, which he pronounced against us, and against our judges that judged Israel, and against our kings, and against our princes, and against the men of Israel and Judah, to bring upon us great plagues, such as never happened under the whole heaven, as it came to pass in Jerusalem, according to the things that are written in the law of Moses; 3 that we should eat every man the flesh of his own son, and every man the flesh of his own daughter. 4 Moreover he hath given them to be in subjection to all the kingdoms that are round about us, to be a reproach and a desolation among all the people round about, where the Lord hath scattered them. 5 Thus were they cast down, and not exalted, because we sinned against the Lord our God, in not hearkening unto his voice. 6 To the Lord our God belongeth righteousness: but unto us and to our fathers confusion of face, as at this day. 7 For all these plagues are come upon us, which the Lord hath pronounced against us. 8 Yet have we not intreated the favour of the Lord, in turning every one from the thoughts of his wicked heart. 9 Therefore hath the Lord kept watch over the plagues, and the Lord hath brought them upon us; for the Lord is righteous in all his works which he hath commanded us. 10 Yet we have not hearkened unto his voice, to walk in the commandments of the Lord that he hath set before us.
11 And now, O Lord, thou God of Israel, that hast brought thy people out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand, and with signs, and with wonders, and with great power, and with a high arm, and hast gotten thyself a name, as at this day: 12 O Lord our God, we have sinned, we have done ungodly, we have dealt unrighteously in all thine ordinances. 13 Let thy wrath turn from us: for we are but a few left among the heathen, where thou hast scattered us. 14 Hear our prayer, O Lord, and our petition, and deliver us for thine own sake, and give us favour in the sight of them which have led us away captive: 15 that all the earth may know that thou art the Lord our God, because Israel and his posterity is called by thy name. 16 O Lord, look down from thine holy house, and consider us: incline thine ear, O Lord, and hear: 17 open thine eyes, and behold: for the dead that are in the grave, whose breath is taken from their bodies, will give unto the Lord neither glory nor righteousness: 18 but the soul that is greatly vexed, which goeth stooping and feeble, and the eyes that fail, and the hungry soul, will give thee glory and righteousness, O Lord. 19 For we do not present our supplication before thee, O Lord our God, for the righteousness of our fathers, and of our kings. 20 For thou hast sent thy wrath and thine indignation upon us, as thou hast spoken by thy servants the prophets, saying, 21 Thus saith the Lord, Bow your shoulders to serve the king of Babylon, and remain in the land that I gave unto your fathers. 22 But if ye will not hear the voice of the Lord, to serve the king of Babylon, 23 I will cause to cease out of the cities of Judah, and from without Jerusalem, the voice of mirth, and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride: and the whole land shall be desolate without inhabitant. 24 But we would not hearken unto thy voice, to serve the king of Babylon: therefore hast thou made good thy words that thou spakest by thy servants the prophets, namely, that the bones of our kings, and the bones of our fathers, should be taken out of their places. 25 And, lo, they are cast out to the heat by day, and to the frost by night, and they died in great miseries by famine, by sword, and by pestilence. 26 And the house which is called by thy name hast thou laid waste, as at this day, for the wickedness of the house of Israel and the house of Judah.
27 Yet, O Lord our God, thou hast dealt with us after all thy kindness, and according to all that great mercy of thine, 28 as thou spakest by thy servant Moses in the day when thou didst command him to write thy law before the children of Israel, saying, 29 If ye will not hear my voice, surely this very great multitude shall be turned into a small number among the nations, where I will scatter them. 30 For I know that they will not hear me, because it is a stiffnecked people: but in the land of their captivity they shall lay it to heart, 31 and shall know that I am the Lord their God: and I will give them a heart, and ears to hear: 32 and they shall praise me in the land of their captivity, and think upon my name, 33 and shall return from their stiff neck, and from their wicked deeds: for they shall remember the way of their fathers, which sinned before the Lord. 34 And I will bring them again into the land which I sware unto their fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, and they shall be lords of it: and I will increase them, and they shall not be diminished. 35 And I will make an everlasting covenant with them to be their God, and they shall be my people: and I will no more remove my people of Israel out of the land that I have given them.
Chapter 3
1 O Lord Almighty, thou God of Israel, the soul in anguish, the troubled spirit, crieth unto thee. 2 Hear, O Lord, and have mercy; for thou art a merciful God: yea, have mercy upon us, because we have sinned before thee. 3 For thou sittest as king for ever, and we perish evermore. 4 O Lord Almighty, thou God of Israel, hear now the prayer of the dead Israelites, and of the children of them which were sinners before thee, that hearkened not unto the voice of thee their God: for the which cause these plagues clave unto us. 5 Remember not the iniquities of our fathers: but remember thy power and thy name now at this time. 6 For thou art the Lord our God, and thee, O Lord, will we praise. 7 For for this cause thou hast put thy fear in our hearts, to the intent that we should call upon thy name: and we will praise thee in our captivity, for we have called to mind all the iniquity of our fathers, that sinned before thee. 8 Behold, we are yet this day in our captivity, where thou hast scattered us, for a reproach and a curse, and to be subject to penalty, according to all the iniquities of our fathers, which departed from the Lord our God.
9 Hear, O Israel, the commandments of life: give ear to understand wisdom. 10 How happeneth it, O Israel, that thou art in thine enemies' land, that thou art waxen old in a strange country, 11 that thou art defiled with the dead, that thou art counted with them that go down into the grave? 12 Thou hast forsaken the fountain of wisdom. 13 For if thou hadst walked in the way of God, thou shouldst have dwelled in peace for ever. 14 Learn where is wisdom, where is strength, where is understanding; that thou mayst know also where is length of days, and life, where is the light of the eyes, and peace. 15 Who hath found out her place? And who hath come into her treasuries? 16 Where are the princes of the heathen, and such as ruled the beasts that are upon the earth; 17 they that had their pastime with the fowls of the air, and they that hoarded up silver and gold, wherein men trust, and of whose getting there is no end? 18 For they that wrought in silver, and were so careful, and whose works are past finding out, 19 they are vanished and gone down to the grave, and others are come up in their steads. 20 Younger men have seen the light, and dwelt upon the earth: 21 but the way of knowledge have they not known, neither understood they the paths thereof: neither have their children laid hold of it: they are far off from their way. 22 It hath not been heard of in Canaan, neither hath it been seen in Teman. 23 The sons also of Agar that seek understanding, which are in the land, the merchants of Merran and Teman, and the authors of fables, and the searchers out of understanding; none of these have known the way of wisdom, or remembered her paths.
24 O Israel, how great is the house of God! And how large is the place of his possession! 25 Great, and hath none end; high, and unmeasurable. 26 There were the giants born that were famous of old, great of stature, and expert in war. 27 These did not God choose, neither gave he the way of knowledge unto them: 28 so they perished, because they had no wisdom, they perished through their own foolishness. 29 Who hath gone up into heaven, and taken her, and brought her down from the clouds? 30 Who hath gone over the sea, and found her, and will bring her for choice gold? 31 There is none that knoweth her way, nor any that comprehendeth her path. 32 But he that knoweth all things knoweth her, he found her out with his understanding: he that prepared the earth for evermore hath filled it with four-footed beasts: 33 he that sendeth forth the light, and it goeth; he called it, and it obeyed him with fear: 34 and the stars shined in their watches, and were glad: when he called them, they said, Here we be; they shined with gladness unto him that made them. 35 This is our God, and there shall none other be accounted of in comparison of him. 36 He hath found out all the way of knowledge, and hath given it unto Jacob his servant, and to Israel that is beloved of him. 37 [Afterward did she appear upon earth, and was conversant with men.]
Chapter 4
1 This is the book of the commandments of God, and the law that endureth for ever: all they that hold it fast are appointed to life; but such as leave it shall die. 2 Turn thee, O Jacob, and take hold of it: walk towards her shining in the presence of the light thereof. 3 Give not thy glory to another, nor the things that are profitable unto thee to a strange nation. 4 O Israel, happy are we: for the things that are pleasing to God are made known unto us.
5 Be of good cheer, my people, the memorial of Israel. 6 Ye were sold to the nations, but not for destruction: because ye moved God to wrath, ye were delivered unto your adversaries. 7 For ye provoked him that made you by sacrificing unto demons, and not to God. 8 Ye forgat the everlasting God, that brought you up; ye grieved also Jerusalem, that nursed you. 9 For she saw the wrath that is come upon you from God, and said, Hearken, ye women that dwell about Sion: for God hath brought upon me great mourning; 10 for I have seen the captivity of my sons and daughters, which the Everlasting hath brought upon them. 11 For with joy did I nourish them; but sent them away with weeping and mourning. 12 Let no man rejoice over me, a widow, and forsaken of many: for the sins of my children am I left desolate; because they turned aside from the law of God, and had no regard to his statutes, 13 neither walked they in the ways of God's commandments, nor trod in the paths of discipline in his righteousness. 14 Let them that dwell about Sion come, and remember ye the captivity of my sons and daughters, which the Everlasting hath brought upon them. 15 For he hath brought a nation upon them from far, a shameless nation, and of a strange language, 16 who neither reverenced old man, nor pitied child. And they have carried away the dear beloved sons of the widow, and left her that was alone desolate of her daughters. 17 But I, what can I help you? 18 For he that brought these plagues upon you will deliver you from the hand of your enemies.
19 Go your way, O my children, go your way: for I am left desolate. 20 I have put off the garment of peace, and put upon me the sackcloth of my petition: I will cry unto the Everlasting as long as I live. 21 Be of good cheer, O my children, cry unto God, and he shall deliver you from the power and hand of the enemies. 22 For I have trusted in the Everlasting, that he will save you; and joy is come unto me from the Holy One, because of the mercy which shall soon come unto you from the Everlasting your Saviour. 23 For I sent you out with mourning and weeping: but God will give you to me again with joy and gladness for ever. 24 For like as now they that dwell about Sion have seen your captivity: so shall they see shortly your salvation from our God, which shall come upon you with great glory, and brightness of the Everlasting. 25 My children, suffer patiently the wrath that is come upon you from God: for thine enemy hath persecuted thee; but shortly thou shalt see his destruction, and shalt tread upon their necks. 26 My delicate ones have gone rough ways; they were taken away as a flock carried off by the enemies. 27 Be of good cheer, O my children, and cry unto God: for ye shall be remembered of him that hath brought these things upon you. 28 For as it was your mind to go astray from God: so, return and seek him ten times more. 29 For he that brought these plagues upon you shall bring you everlasting joy again with your salvation.
30 Be of good cheer, O Jerusalem: for he that called thee by name will comfort thee. 31 Miserable are they that afflicted thee, and rejoiced at thy fall. 32 Miserable are the cities which thy children served: miserable is she that received thy sons. 33 For as she rejoiced at thy fall, and was glad of thy ruin: so shall she be grieved for her own desolation. 34 And I will take away her exultation in her great multitude, and her boasting shall be turned into mourning. 35 For fire shall come upon her from the Everlasting, long to endure; and she shall be inhabited of devils for a great time. 36 O Jerusalem, look about thee toward the east, and behold the joy that cometh unto thee from God. 37 Lo, thy sons come, whom thou sentest away, they come gathered together from the east to the west, at the word of the Holy One, rejoicing in the glory of God.
Chapter 5
1 Put off, O Jerusalem, the garment of thy mourning and affliction, and put on the comeliness of the glory that cometh from God for ever. 2 Cast about thee the robe of the righteousness which cometh from God; set a diadem on thine head of the glory of the Everlasting. 3 For God will show thy brightness unto every nation under heaven. 4 For thy name shall be called of God for ever, The peace of righteousness, and the glory of godliness.
5 Arise, O Jerusalem, and stand upon the height, and look about thee toward the east, and behold thy children gathered from the going down of the sun unto the rising thereof, at the word of the Holy One, rejoicing that God hath remembered them. 6 For they went from thee on foot, being led away of their enemies: but God bringeth them in unto thee borne on high with glory, as on a royal throne. 7 For God hath appointed that every high mountain, and the everlasting hills, should be made low, and the valleys filled up, to make plain the ground, that Israel may go safely in the glory of God. 8 Moreover the woods and every sweet-smelling tree have overshadowed Israel, by the commandment of God. 9 For God shall lead Israel with joy in the light of his glory, with the mercy and righteousness that cometh from him.
Colophon
Prepared from R. H. Charles (ed.), The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English, Vol. 1: Apocrypha (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913), translation and introduction by O. C. Whitehouse. Source: archive.org item apocryphapseudep01charuoft (University of Toronto copy).
This edition's per-verse textual-critical apparatus — the running Greek, Syriac, Latin, and reconstructed-Hebrew notes that follow each block of translation in the 1913 printing — is omitted from this transcription; it survives complete in the printed edition and in the cited scan. Whitehouse's "§ 12. Selected Literature," a bibliography of secondary works on Baruch, is likewise omitted from the introduction as reference apparatus rather than argument; the substantive discussion that follows it in the original (on the two parts of the confession in i.15–iii.8) has been folded into this text. The Book of Baruch's own chapter and verse numbering is reconstructed here from the 1913 page images, where marginal verse numbers are frequently faint, dropped, or interleaved with footnote apparatus in the scan; numbering has been cross-checked against Whitehouse's own verse-by-verse notes wherever those notes quote or identify a specific verse, and no wording has been altered to fit a guessed number. No word or phrase of the translation text itself was illegible in the scan; all uncertainty in this transcription concerns verse-number placement, not wording.
Prepared for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church with AI-assisted transcription and editorial work.
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