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Baruch

About this book

Wisdom and the Torah

Chapter 4

1 This is the book of God’s commandments⁠ and the law that endures forever. All those who hold it fast will live, but those who leave it will die. 2 Turn, O Jacob, and take hold of it. Walk toward the shining of its light. 3 Don’t give your glory to another, nor the things that are to your advantage to a foreign nation. 4 O Israel, we are happy; for the things that are pleasing to God are made known to us.⁠

Jerusalem Mourns Her Children

5 Be of good cheer, my people, the memorial of Israel. 6 You were not sold to the nations for destruction, but because you moved God to wrath, you were delivered to your adversaries. 7 For you provoked him who made you by sacrificing to demons and not to God.⁠ 8 You forgot the everlasting God who brought you up. You also grieved Jerusalem, who nursed you.⁠ 9 For she saw the wrath that came upon you from God, and said, “Listen, you who dwell near Zion; for God has brought upon me great mourning. 10 For I have seen the captivity of my sons and daughters, which the Everlasting has brought upon them. 11 For with joy I nourished them, but sent them away with weeping and mourning. 12 Let no man rejoice over me, a widow and forsaken by many. For the sins of my children, I am left desolate, because they turned away from the law of God⁠ 13 and had no regard for his statutes. They didn’t walk in the ways of God’s commandments or tread in the paths of discipline in his righteousness. 14 Let those who dwell near Zion come and remember the captivity of my sons and daughters, which the Everlasting has brought upon them. 15 For he has brought a nation upon them from afar, a shameless nation with a strange language, who didn’t respect old men or pity children. 16 They have carried away the dear beloved sons of the widow, and left her who was alone desolate of her daughters.” 17 But I—how can I help you? 18 For he who brought these calamities upon you will deliver you from the hand of your enemies.

Jerusalem Encourages Her Children

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 on the sackcloth of my petition. I will cry to the Everlasting as long as I live.⁠ 21 Take courage, my children. Cry to God, and he will 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 has come to me from the Holy One, because of the mercy that will soon come to you from your Everlasting Savior. 23 For I sent you out with mourning and weeping, but God will give you to me again with joy and gladness forever. 24 For as now those who dwell near Zion have seen your captivity, so they will shortly see your salvation from our God which will come upon you with great glory and brightness of the Everlasting.⁠ 25 My children, suffer patiently the wrath that has come upon you from God, for your enemy has persecuted you; but shortly you will see his destruction and will tread upon their necks.⁠ 26 My delicate ones have traveled rough roads. They were taken away like a flock carried off by enemies. 27 Take courage, my children, and cry to God; for you will be remembered by him who has brought this upon you. 28 For as it was your decision to go astray from God, return and seek him ten times more. 29 For he who brought these calamities upon you will bring you everlasting joy again with your salvation.

Comfort for Jerusalem

30 Take courage, O Jerusalem, for he who called you by name will comfort you. 31 Miserable are those who afflicted you and rejoiced at your fall. 32 Miserable are the cities which your children served. Miserable is she who received your sons.⁠ 33 For as she rejoiced at your fall and was glad of your ruin, so she will be grieved at her own desolation. 34 And I will take away her pride in her great multitude and her boasting will be turned into mourning. 35 For fire will come upon her from the Everlasting for many days; and she will be inhabited by demons for a long time.⁠

The Return of Jerusalem’s Children

36 O Jerusalem, look around you toward the east, and behold the joy that comes to you from God.⁠ 37 Behold, your sons come, whom you sent away. They come gathered together from the east to the west⁠ at the word of the Holy One, rejoicing in the glory of God.

Texts in conversation

Compare Baruch 4:20 and Athanasius, Discourse Against the Arians 12:1

Deuterocanon · Early Christian

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Summary

The Christian theologian Athanasius uses Baruch’s image of Jerusalem exchanging peace for sackcloth to teach about God’s faithfulness. He uses Baruch as an authoritative source to resolve debates about suffering and redemption.

Passages

Baruch 4:20

Deuterocanon
18 For he who brought these calamities 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 on the sackcloth of my petition. I will cry to the Everlasting as long as I live. 21 Take courage, my children. Cry to God, and he will 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 has come to me from the Holy One, because of the mercy that will soon come to you from your Everlasting Savior. 23 For I sent you out with mourning and weeping, but God will give you to me again with joy and gladness forever. 24 For as now those who dwell near Zion have seen your captivity, so they will shortly see your salvation from our God which will come upon you with great glory and brightness of the Everlasting.
200–50 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Baruch

Athanasius, Discourse Against the Arians 12:1

Early Christian
For after mentioning the creation, he naturally speaks of the Maker's Power as seen in it; and that Power, I say, is the Word of God, through whom all things have been made. If indeed the creation is sufficient by itself alone, without the Son, to make God known, be careful not to fall into thinking that it has come into being without the Son. But if it has come into being through the Son, and 'in Him all things hold together,' it must follow that whoever contemplates the creation rightly is also contemplating the Word who made it, and through Him begins to grasp the Father. And if, as the Savior also says, 'No one knows the Father except the Son, and the one to whom the Son reveals Him,' and if, when Philip asked, 'Show us the Father,' He did not say, 'Look at the creation,' but, 'Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father,' then Paul has good reason — while accusing the Greeks of contemplating the harmony and order of creation without reflecting on the Word who made it and is within it (for the creatures bear witness to their own Maker), so as to grasp the true God through creation and abandon their worship of it — Paul has good reason, I say, to speak of 'His Eternal Power and Godhead,' meaning the Son by it. And where the sacred writers say, 'Who exists before the ages,' and 'Through whom He made the ages,' they proclaim just as clearly the eternal and everlasting being of the Son, even while they are speaking of God Himself. So, if Isaiah says, 'The Everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth'; and Susanna said, 'O Everlasting God'; and Baruch wrote, 'I will cry to the Everlasting in my days,' and shortly after, 'My hope is in the Everlasting, that He will save you, and joy has come to me from the Holy One'; still, since the Apostle, writing to the Hebrews, says, 'Who, being the radiance of His glory and the Expression of His Person'; and David too in the eighty-ninth Psalm, 'And let the brightness of the Lord be upon us,' and, 'In Your Light we shall see Light' — who has so little sense as to doubt the eternity of the Son? For when did anyone see light without the brightness of its radiance, that he may say of the Son, 'There was once when He was not,' or 'Before His generation He was not'? And the words addressed to the Son in the hundred and forty-fourth Psalm, 'Your kingdom is a kingdom of all ages,' forbid anyone to imagine any interval at all in which the Word did not exist. For if every interval in the ages is measured, and the Word is King and Maker of all the ages, then, since no interval at all exists before Him, it would be madness to say, 'There was once when the Everlasting was not,' and 'The Son is from nothing.' And since the Lord Himself says, 'I am the Truth,' not 'I became the Truth,' but always 'I am — I am the Shepherd — I am the Light,' and again, 'Do you not call Me Lord and Master? And you say well, for so I am' — who, hearing such language from God, the Wisdom and Word of the Father, speaking of Himself, will still hesitate about the truth, and not at once believe that the phrase 'I am' means that the Son is eternal and without beginning?
355–360 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in Athanasius, Discourse Against the Arians

References

"... The figure of Baruch is associated with the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch (2 Baruch), the Greek Apocalypse of Baruch (3 Baruch), and the Paraleipomena Jeremiou (4 Baruch). Baruch is not mentioned in the New Testament or Apostolic Fathers, even with regard to the incarnate wisdom motif in 3.38 (compare John 1:14; Romans 8:3; Hebrews 2:14), although Baruch does appear in canon lists from the fourth century (Athanasius, Ep. Fest. 39; Cyril of Jerusalem, Cat. 4.35; Epiphanius, Pan. 8.6.1-4). Early Jewish and Christian writings assign Baruch uncertain prophetic status. The Masoretes saw Baruch as Jeremiah’s scribe (e.g., Jeremiah 36:27, 32) and the Byzantine Vitae Prophetarum excludes Baruch. Yet the earliest quotation from Baruch (Athenagorus, Leg. 9) names Baruch as a prophet, and some authority is suggested where Optatus of Milevis appeals to Baruch in a church controversy (Against the Donatists 7.1). With regard to biblical theology, Baruch has received some attention as to the ethical system offered by its exegesis of sin, exile, and repentance (Harrington, Invitation, p. 93; see also Harlow, Greek, p. 168; Wright, Baruch, pp. 113–21) ..."
Daniel Ryan, “Baruch,” in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint, ed. James K. Aitken, Bloomsbury Companions (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015), 487–499.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Baruch 4:20 and Athanasius, Discourse Against the Arians 12:1

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