3. “Maybe the community of Judah will finally get it, finally understand the catastrophe that I’m planning for them, turn back from their bad lives, and let me forgive their perversity and sin.”
4. So Jeremiah called in Baruch son of Neriah. Jeremiah dictated and Baruch wrote down on a scroll everything that God had said to him.
5-6. Then Jeremiah told Baruch, “I’m blacklisted. I can’t go into God’s Temple, so you’ll have to go in my place. Go into the Temple and read everything you’ve written at my dictation. Wait for a day of fasting when everyone is there to hear you. And make sure that all the people who come from the Judean villages hear you.
7. “Maybe, just maybe, they’ll start praying and God will hear their prayers. Maybe they’ll turn back from their bad lives. This is no light matter. God has certainly let them know how angry he is!”
8. Baruch son of Neriah did everything Jeremiah the prophet told him to do. In the Temple of God he read the Message of God from the scroll.
9. It came about in December of the fifth year of Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah that all the people of Jerusalem, along with all the people from the Judean villages, were there in Jerusalem to observe a fast to God.
30-31. “‘Well, do you want to know what God says about Jehoiakim king of Judah? This: No descendant of his will ever rule from David’s throne. His corpse will be thrown in the street and left unburied, exposed to the hot sun and the freezing night. I will punish him and his children and the officials in his government for their blatant sin. I’ll let loose on them and everyone in Jerusalem the doomsday disaster of which I warned them but they spit at.’”