The King Who Cut Up the Scroll
20 They went in to the king into the court, but they had laid up the scroll in the room of Elishama the scribe. Then they told all the words in the hearing of the king. 21 So the king sent Jehudi to get the scroll, and he took it out of the room of Elishama the scribe. Jehudi read it in the hearing of the king, and in the hearing of all the princes who stood beside the king. 22 Now the king was sitting in the winter house in the ninth month, and there was a fire in the brazier burning before him. 23 When Jehudi had read three or four columns, the king cut it with the penknife, and cast it into the fire that was in the brazier, until all the scroll was consumed in the fire that was in the brazier. 24 The king and his servants who heard all these words were not afraid, and didn’t tear their garments. 25 Moreover Elnathan and Delaiah and Gemariah had made intercession to the king that he would not burn the scroll; but he would not listen to them. 26 The king commanded Jerahmeel the king’s son, and Seraiah the son of Azriel, and Shelemiah the son of Abdeel, to arrest Baruch the scribe and Jeremiah the prophet; but Yahweh hid them. 27 Then Yahweh’s word came to Jeremiah, after the king had burned the scroll, and the words which Baruch wrote at the mouth of Jeremiah, saying, 28 “Take again another scroll, and write in it all the former words that were in the first scroll, which Jehoiakim the king of Judah has burned. 29 Concerning Jehoiakim king of Judah you shall say, ‘Yahweh says: “You have burned this scroll, saying, ‘Why have you written therein, saying, “The king of Babylon will certainly come and destroy this land, and will cause to cease from there man and animal”?’” 30 Therefore Yahweh says concerning Jehoiakim king of Judah: “He will have no one to sit on David’s throne. His dead body will be cast out in the day to the heat, and in the night to the frost. 31 I will punish him, his offspring, and his servants for their iniquity. I will bring on them, on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and on the men of Judah, all the evil that I have pronounced against them, but they didn’t listen.”’” 32 Then Jeremiah took another scroll, and gave it to Baruch the scribe, the son of Neriah, who wrote therein from the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of the book which Jehoiakim king of Judah had burned in the fire; and many similar words were added to them.
Jehoiakim shreds the scroll column by column as it is read to him, and the reply is a second scroll containing everything in the first and more.
The scene is domestic and unhurried, which is what makes it terrible. It is the ninth month, the king is in his winter apartment, and a brazier is burning in front of him. Jehudi reads three or four columns. The king cuts them off with a scribe's knife and drops them in the fire. The reading continues, and the process repeats until the whole scroll is consumed. Nobody snatches it and burns it in a rage. It is destroyed methodically, at the reading pace, as an act of policy.
The verdict is delivered in a single sentence about what did not happen: The king and his servants who heard all these words were not afraid, and didn't tear their garments. Both halves point at his father. When a book of the law was found in the temple in Josiah's day, that king tore his clothes on hearing it 2 Kings 22:11, and a national reformation followed. The princes in the previous scene had been afraid. The son of Josiah, hearing more than his father heard, feels nothing. Three men — Elnathan, Delaiah and Gemariah — beg him not to burn it, and he will not listen.
The words the king objects to are quoted, and they are entirely factual: why have you written that the king of Babylon will certainly come and destroy this land? What he burns is a prediction. The burning is an attempt to deal with the future by destroying the paper it is written on. The sentence that answers it is exact and personal. He will have no one to sit on David's throne, and his body will be thrown out to the day's heat and the night's frost. A man who was warm by his fire while he did it is left in the open at both ends of the day.
And the reply to the fire is more writing. Another scroll, the same scribe, the same dictation, all the former words restored — and then the clause that closes the chapter: many similar words were added to them. The destruction cost the nation the shorter version. This is also the book's own explanation of its shape, and the reason the material is not in chronological order. What exists is a second edition, assembled from memory and expanded, by two men in hiding.
settled What this mark means