Anakalypsis / Unveiling the Word
← →
⚙ Annotations & References ▾
Manuscript witnesses 2 ▾
Codex Vaticanus B c. AD 300-325 Codex Alexandrinus A c. AD 400-440
What is Baruch 2 about?

Continuing the confession begun at the river, the exiles rehearse how God carried out the words He had spoken through Moses, bringing upon Judah the calamities of siege and scattering because the people would not obey His voice. They acknowledge that the disaster is deserved, recalling even the horror of the siege, and they turn to plead for mercy, confessing that it is the living who praise the Lord and not the dead who lie in their affliction. Appealing to the covenant sworn to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and to God's own promise to give His people a heart to know Him, they ask Him to turn away His anger for His name's sake. The prayer holds honest confession and steady hope together, grounding the exiles' plea in God's faithfulness rather than in any merit of their own.

Historical backdrop

The book sets itself in Babylon among the exiles of Judah, in the years after Nebuchadnezzar broke Jerusalem and burned the temple. It speaks from beside the great rivers of Mesopotamia, in the shadow of a city whose gods rode in procession, idols of silver and gold that its people carried on their shoulders and could not carry themselves. The appended letter turns that idolatry to scorn, and the whole reaches back to the exile as the school where Israel learned again to hope in the God who has no image.

The Church Fathers on Baruch 2
Deuterocanon (Catholic & Orthodox) · Accepted as canonical Scripture by the Catholic and Orthodox traditions and included in the original 1611 KJV (between the Old and New Testaments). Not in the Protestant 66-book canon. Read with the same care you bring to other Scripture, conscious that Protestants and Catholics weigh its authority differently.

Baruch 2

Baruch Chapter 2
2
← Chapter 1 Chapter 3 →
What is Baruch 2 about?

Continuing the confession begun at the river, the exiles rehearse how God carried out the words He had spoken through Moses, bringing upon Judah the calamities of siege and scattering because the people would not obey His voice. They acknowledge that the disaster is deserved, recalling even the horror of the siege, and they turn to plead for mercy, confessing that it is the living who praise the Lord and not the dead who lie in their affliction. Appealing to the covenant sworn to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and to God's own promise to give His people a heart to know Him, they ask Him to turn away His anger for His name's sake. The prayer holds honest confession and steady hope together, grounding the exiles' plea in God's faithfulness rather than in any merit of their own.