Context at a Glance
Author:Traditional Attribution
Topic:baruch Chapter 5 Study
This chapter provides a foundational look at the theological themes of baruch, analyzed across multiple historic translations for maximum scholarly depth.
Baruch 5
New Revised Standard Version
1Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction, O Jerusalem, and put on forever the beauty of the glory from God.
2Put on the robe of the righteousness that comes from God; put on your head the diadem of the glory of the Everlasting;
3for God will show your splendor everywhere under heaven.
4For God will give you evermore the name, "Righteous Peace, Godly Glory."
5Arise, O Jerusalem, stand upon the height; look toward the east, and see your children gathered from west and east at the word of the Holy One, rejoicing that God has remembered them.
6For they went out from you on foot, led away by their enemies; but God will bring them back to you, carried in glory, as on a royal throne.
7For God has ordered that every high mountain and the everlasting hills be made low and the valleys filled up, to make level ground, so that Israel may walk safely in the glory of God.
8The woods and every fragrant tree have shaded Israel at God's command.
9For God will lead Israel with joy, in the light of his glory, with the mercy and righteousness that come from him. LETTER OF JEREMIAH
264LETTER OF JEREMIAH Introduction These seventy-three verses purport to be a letter composed by Jeremiah for those about to be taken into exile from Judah to Babylonia in
597BCE by Nebuchadnezzar's forces. It was undoubtedly inspired by Jeremiah's letter (Jer 29.1-23) to those taken hostage in 597, a decade before the final defeat of Judah and the destruction of Jerusalem. The Letter of Jeremiah is an impassioned sermon against idol worship and polytheism based on Jer 10, and particularly Jer 10.11: "The gods who did not make the heavens and the earth shall perish from the earth and from under the heavens." The Letter is also influenced, however, by other biblical polemics against idol worship (Ps 115.4-8; 135.15-18; Isa 40.18.20; 41.6-7; 44.9-20; 46.1-7; etc.). The body of the letter is composed of a series of ten warnings to Jews, who might be attracted to idol worship, to recognize and be wary of idolatry. Each part ends on a common refrain, with variations, insisting that idols are not gods nor to be confused with the one, true God (vv. 16, 23, 29, 40, 44, 52, 56, 65, 69, 72). Although all surviving manuscripts of the letter are in Greek, including one fragment from Cave
7at Qumran, the Letter was probably composed originally in Hebrew or Aramaic. Most scholars date the Letter to the Hellenistic period. The reference in v.
3to an exile lasting seven generations (280 years) has been taken as a clue to the date of composition of the letter (317 BCE), but the reference to seven generations is probably symbolic. The allusion to the Letter in
2Macc 2.1-3 would indicate a date no later than the second century BCE. The Letter has different placements in various manuscripts and versions of the Bible. It stands as a discrete work between Lamentations and Ezekiel in two major Greek Septuagint manuscripts (fourth-century Vaticanus and fifth-century Alexandrius), in the Milan Syriac Hexapla, LETTER OF JEREMIAH
265and in Arabic. In other Greek and Syriac manuscripts, and in the Latin version, it appears as the sixth chapter of Baruch. Since it is, however, clearly independent of Baruch, the New Revised Standard Version treats it as a separate book. This pseudepigraphical work was written for a Jewish audience, perhaps in Palestine. It is not included in either the Jewish or Protestant canons, but is one of the deuterocanonical books of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches.