1And these are the words of the book that Baruch son of Neriah, son of Maaseiah, son of Zedekiah, son of Hasadiah, son of Hilkiah, wrote in Babylon,
2in the fifth year, on the seventh day of the month, at the time when the Chaldeans took Jerusalem and burned it with fire.
3And Baruch read the words of this book in the hearing of Jeconiah son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, and in the hearing of all the people who came for the book,
4and in the hearing of the powerful and the sons of the kings, and in the hearing of the elders, and in the hearing of all the people from the least to the greatest—all who were dwelling in Babylon by the river Sud.
5And they wept, fasted, and prayed before the Lord.
6And they collected silver, according to what each one’s hand could give.
7And they sent it to Jerusalem to Jehoiakim son of Hilkiah, son of Shallum the priest, and to the priests and to all the people who were found with him in Jerusalem,
8at the time he received the vessels of the house of the Lord that had been carried out from the temple to be returned to the land of Judah. This was on the tenth of Sivan—the silver vessels that Zedekiah son of Josiah, king of Judah, had made,
9after Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had carried into exile Jeconiah and the princes and the prisoners and the powerful and the people of the land from Jerusalem, and had brought him to Babylon.
10And they said, “Behold, we have sent silver to you. Buy with the silver burnt offerings and sin offerings and incense, and prepare a grain offering and offer it on the altar of the Lord our God.
11And pray for the life of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and for the life of Belshazzar his son, so that their days may be as the days of heaven upon the earth.
12And the Lord will give us strength and enlighten our eyes, and we will live under the shadow of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and under the shadow of Belshazzar his son. And we will serve them for many days and find favor in their sight.
13And pray for us to the Lord our God, because we have sinned against the Lord our God, and the Lord’s fury and his wrath have not turned away from us to this day.
14And you shall read this book that we have sent to you, to make public confession in the house of the Lord on a feast day and on appointed days.”
15And you shall say, ‘To the Lord our God belongs righteousness, but to us, shame of face, as it is this day—to the people of Judah and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem,
16and to our kings and our princes, and to our priests and our prophets, and to our fathers,
17because we sinned before the Lord
18and we disobeyed him, and did not listen to the voice of the Lord our God, to walk in the commandments of the Lord that he set before us.
19From the day the Lord brought our fathers out of the land of Egypt until this day, we have been disobedient to the Lord our God and have been heedless, so as not to listen to his voice.
20And so the evils and the curse have clung to us, the curse that the Lord commanded his servant Moses on the day he brought our fathers out of the land of Egypt to give us a land flowing with milk and honey, as it is this day.
21We have not listened to the voice of the Lord our God in accordance with all the words of the prophets whom he sent to us.
22Instead, we have each gone away in the intent of his own evil heart to serve other gods and to do what is evil in the sight of the Lord our God.
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