Thursday, January 10, 2019

John A. Thompson on Jeremiah Expanding Upon His Original Revelations in Jeremiah 36:28-32


"Take another scroll and write on it all the former words that were in the first scroll, which Jehoiakim the king of Judah has burned. And concerning Jehoiakim king of Judah you shall say, 'Thus says the Lord, You have burned this scroll, saying, "Why have you written in it that the king of Babylon will certainly come and destroy this land, and will cut off from it man and beast?" Therefore thus says the Lord concerning Jehoiakim king of Judah: He shall have none to sit on the throne of David, and his dead body shall be cast out to the heat by day and the frost by night. And I will punish him and his offspring and his servants for their iniquity. I will bring upon them and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem and upon the people of Judah all the disaster that I have pronounced against them, but they would not hear.'" Then Jeremiah took another scroll and gave it to Baruch the scribe, the son of Neriah, who wrote on it at the dictation of Jeremiah all the words of the scroll that Jehoiakim king of Judah had burned in the fire. And many similar words were added to them. (Jer 36:28-32, ESV)

Commenting on this text and the fact that Jeremiah’s second scroll was an expansion of the original, not simply a reproduction of the original (as some ignorant critics have claimed, such as Norman Geisler and Richard Abanes), John A. Thompson, a conservative Protestant scholar, wrote:

The narrative of ch. 36 tells us that in the fourth year of Jehoiakim (605 B.C.) Yahweh commanded Jeremiah to obtain a scroll and write on it everything concerning Israel and Judah and all the nations since Yahweh first spoke to him in the days of Josiah. The tantalizing question is: What was the content of this scroll, and also of the expanded scroll which Jeremiah and Baruch produced when King Jehoiakim burned the first one leaf by leaf? . . . . The second scroll was not merely a copy of the first but contained additional material described as many similar words. (John A. Thompson, The Book of Jeremiah [New International Commentary on the Old Testament; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1980], 56, 629, emphasis in bold added)




Further Reading

Biblical Prophets Changing their Words and the Words of Previous Prophets