Then took Jeremiah another roll
Of parchment; several sheets joined together, which made up a roll or volume: and gave it to Baruch the scribe, the son of Neriah;
who was by office a public notary or scribe of the law, as well as the amanuensis of the prophet: who wrote therein from the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of the book
which Jehoiakim king of Judah had burnt in the fire;
not one was lost; all were recovered again, through the fresh inspiration of the Holy Spirit, under which Jeremiah dictated the selfsame things in the same words to Baruch again; so that the king got nothing by burning it, but an addition of guilt, and a heavier denunciation of wrath and vengeance, as follows: and there were added besides unto them many like words;
of the same nature and argument, of the threatening kind more especially. The Rabbins F25, who take the roll to be the book of Lamentations, very triflingly observe, that the first roll had only the three alphabets, in the first, second, and fourth chapters that the addition is the treble alphabet, in the third chapter the whole of the fifth chapter. Here it may not be amiss to insert the testimony of Eupolemus F26, an Heathen historian, concerning Jeremiah and his prophecies in the times of Jehoiakim.
``Joachim, (for so he calls him,) in his times Jeremiah the prophet prophesied, being sent of God, to take the Jews sacrificing to a golden idol, called by them Baal, and to declare unto them the calamity that was coming upon them; but Joachim would have laid hold on him, and burnt him alive; then he (the prophet) said that with those sticks they should prepare food for the Babylonians, and that they should dig canals from the Tigris and Euphrates when carried captive; wherefore, when Nebuchadnezzar king of the Babylonians heard what was prophesied by Jeremiah, he besought Astibares, king of the Medes, to join his forces with him; and having gathered and joined together the Babylonians and Medes, a hundred and eighty thousand foot, and a hundred and twenty thousand horse, with ten thousand chariots, first destroyed Samaria, Galilee, Scythopolis, and the Jews that inhabited Gilead; and then marched to Jerusalem, and took alive Joachim king of the Jews; and having taken out the gold, silver, and brass in the temple, sent it to Babylon, excepting the ark and the tables in it, for this remained with Jeremiah;''compare with this ( Jeremiah 22:18 ) ( 25:1-27:22 ) ( 2 Kings 24:1-4 ) .