The words which follow were committed to writing in the country of Babylon. The writer of them, Baruch, was descended from Helcias, through Nerias, Maasias, Sedecias and Sedei,

and wrote in the fifth year, … on the seventh day of the month, at the time when the Chaldaeans took Jerusalem and burnt it to the ground.✻

Baruch read this book of his aloud to Jechonias, son of Joakim, king of Juda. All the people, too, flocked to hear the reading of it,

nobles and royal princes, and elders, and common folk high and low; all that were then living in the country of Babylon, near the river Sodi.

And as they heard it, all was weeping and fasting and prayer offered in the Lord’s presence;

they made a collection of money besides, each according to his means,

which they sent to the chief priest, Joachim, son of Helcias, son of Salom, and his fellow priests and fellow citizens at Jerusalem.

… when he✻ travelled to Juda on the tenth day of Sivan, taking with him the sanctuary ornaments which had been removed from the temple, and were now to be restored. They were of silver; Sedecias, the son of Josias, that now reigned in Juda, had had them made,

when Jechonias, with the princes and all the nobles and many other citizens of Jerusalem, was carried off by Nabuchodonosor, king of Babylon, to his own country.

Here is money, they said, with which you are to buy victims for burnt-sacrifice, and incense; bloodless offerings✻ too you must make, and amends for fault committed, at the altar of the Lord our God.

You shall pray long life for king Nabuchodonosor of Babylon, and his son Baltassar, that their reign on earth may last as long as heaven itself.

May the Lord grant courage to all of us, and send us a gleam of hope; long thrive we under the protection of king Nabuchodonosor and his son Baltassar, persevering loyally in their service and winning their favour!

And intercede with the Lord our God for us exiles; against his divine will we have rebelled, and to this hour he has not relented.

Scan closely, too, this book we are sending to you; it is to be read aloud on feast-days and in times of solemn assembly.

You shall make your prayer in these words following.

The fault was never with him, the Lord our God; ours the blush of shame, as all Juda this day and all the citizens of Jerusalem can witness.

With king and prince of ours, priest and prophet of ours the fault lies, and with our fathers before us.

We have defied the will of the Lord our God; trust and loyalty we had none to give him,

nor ever shewed him submission, by listening to his divine voice and following the commands he gave us.

Ever since the day when he rescued our fathers from Egypt we have been in rebellion against the Lord our God, straying ever further from the sound of his voice;

till at last, as these times can witness, bale and ban have caught us by the heels, the very same he pronounced to his servant Moses long ago, when he had rescued our fathers from Egypt and was leading them on to a land all milk and honey.

Unheeded, that divine voice, when message after message came to us through his prophets;

each must follow the whim of his own false heart, doing sacrifice to alien gods, and setting the will of the Lord, our own God, at defiance.