is
predictions were justified, and he was able to put a sharper edge on them.
Henceforth in place of the _enemy from the North_ Jeremiah could speak
definitely of the _King of Babylon_ and of his people _the Chaldeans_.

In Ch. XXV we read accordingly that in that year, 604-3, he delivered to
the people of Jerusalem a summary of his previous oracles. He told them
that the cup of the Lord's wrath was given into his hand; Judah and other
nations, especially Egypt, must drink it and so stagger to their doom.

But a spoken and a summary discourse was not enough. Like Amos and Isaiah,
Jeremiah was moved to commit his previous Oracles to writing. In Ch. XXXVI
is a narrative presumably by an eyewitness of the transactions it
recounts, and this most probably the scribe who was associated with the
Prophet in these transactions. Jeremiah was commanded to _take a roll of a
book and write on __ it all the words which_ the Lord _had spoken to him
concerning Jerusalem_(_33_)_ and Judah and all the nations from the day_
the Lord first _spake to him, in the days of Josiah, even unto this day_.
For this purpose he employed Baruch, the son of Neriah, afterwards
designated the Scribe, and Baruch wrote on the Roll to his dictation.
Being unable himself to enter the Temple he charged Baruch to go there and
to read the Roll on a fast-day _in the ears of all the people of Judah who
have come in from their cities_. Baruch found his opportunity in the
following December, and read the Roll from the New Gate of the Temple to
the multitude. This was reported to some of the princes in the Palace
below, who sent for Baruch and had him read the Roll over to them. Divided
between alarm at its contents and their duty to the king, they sent
Jeremiah and Baruch into hiding while they made report to Jehoiakim. The
king had the Roll read out once more to himself as he sat in his room in
front of a lighted brasier, for it was winter. The reading incensed him,
and as the reader finished each three or four columns he cut them up and
threw them on the fire till the whole was consumed. But Jeremiah, in safe
hiding with Baruch, took another Roll and dictated again the contents of
the first; _and there were added besides unto them many like words_.

The story has been questioned, but by very few, and on no grounds that are
perceptible to common sense. One critic imagines that it ascribes
miraculous power to the Prophet in "its natural impression that the
Prophet