The invocation at
Baruch 3:4, that God hear “the prayers of the dead of Israel,” likely, however,
refers to Israelites in exile in Babylonia or is a mistranslation in the Greek.
(“Scripture
on Christ, the Saints, and Mary,” in The One Mediator, the Saints, and Mary,
ed. H. George Anderson, J. Francis Stafford, and Joseph A. Burgess [Lutherans
and Catholics in Dialogue VIII; Minneapolis, Minn.: Augsburg Fortress, 1992], 73)
“The dead of Israel” is explained in 3:10-11 to refer to
Israel “in the land of your enemies, . . . defiled with the dead, . . . counted
among those in Hades”; cf. Isa 59:10; Lam 3:6 in its context of 3:1ff. A New
Catholic Commentary (n. 106 above; 505i, p. 630; P. P. Saydon and T.
Hanlon) points out that “a desperate condition is sometimes compared to death;
cf. Is 26:19.” The NAB takes the Hebrew underlying the Greek tōn tethnēkotōn
to be, not mêtê “dead,” but metê “the few of Israel”
(cf. Isa 41:14: [New International Version] “O little Israel;” [Luther] “du
armer Haufe Israel”). (Ibid., 347 n. 107)
