Jeremiah 36:20 - Meaning and Application

We have followed the scroll from the people to the princes, and now we come to the king. When Jehoiakim, the king of Judah, heard about it, he sent for the scroll and ordered it read to him (Jeremiah 36:20-21). He did not ask Baruch to read it, even though Baruch could have read it with more understanding, authority, and feeling. He also did not ask one of his princes to read it, though that would not have been beneath them. Instead, he had Jehudi, one of his attendants, read it, a man who may have barely known how to make sense of it.

This showed his contempt for God’s word, and soon his hatred for it became clear too. He could not sit through the reading as the princes had. After hearing only a few columns of the scroll, he grew angry, cut it with his penknife, and threw it into the fire piece by piece, making sure every part was burned (Jeremiah 36:22-23). This was bold, open sin, and a direct insult to the God of heaven whose message it was. It showed how much he hated being corrected, since he had no desire to hear his sins exposed.

It also showed his anger toward Baruch and Jeremiah, the prophet who spoke God’s words and his scribe. In his fury, he would have destroyed them too if they had been within reach. It also showed his fixed refusal to obey what God had warned him about. He meant to do whatever he wanted, no matter what God said through His prophets. He foolishly seemed to think that if he destroyed the scroll, he could cancel the judgment written in it.

He also seems to have thought he could stop the warning from spreading any further. The chief priests had once tried to keep the gospel from spreading in the same way (Acts 4:17). Jehoiakim had been told that this scroll had already been read to the people and the princes. In effect, he said, “I will find a way to keep it from being read again.” See how strong human resistance can be against God when the heart is unrenewed. And marvel at God’s patience, that He bears such insults.

Neither the king nor his princes were moved by the word. They were not afraid (Jeremiah 36:24), not even those princes who had trembled at it the first time they heard it (Jeremiah 36:16). Good impressions can fade quickly. They had shown concern until they saw how lightly the king treated the matter, and then they dropped their concern. They did not tear their clothes, as Josiah, Jehoiakim’s father, had done when the book of the law was read to him, even though this scroll spoke more directly to the crisis then facing them.

Still, three of the princes had enough sense and grace left to try to stop the scroll from being burned, though they failed (Jeremiah 36:25). If they had from the start shown the proper response to the word, they might perhaps have helped the king think more clearly and bear the message with patience. But often people who refuse to do the good they ought lose the power to do the good they wish.

After Jehoiakim had, as it were, burned God’s warrant against him in revenge, he then ordered Jeremiah and Baruch, God’s servants, to be arrested (Jeremiah 36:26). But the Lord hid them. The princes had told them to stay out of sight (Jeremiah 36:19), yet their safety did not come from the princes’ care or from their own caution. It came from God’s protection. God will always find shelter for His people, even when their enemies work hard to catch them, until the time He appoints. And when that time comes, He Himself will still be their hiding place.

Jeremiah was then told to write the same words again on another scroll, the same words Jehoiakim had burned (Jeremiah 36:27-28). This shows that, although Satan’s attacks on God’s word are bold, not one small part of it will fail, and human unbelief cannot make God’s word empty. Enemies may burn many Bibles, but they cannot destroy the word of God or keep its message from being fulfilled. The law tablets were broken, and then made again. So from the ashes of the burned scroll, another one rose up, as if from a phoenix. The word of the Lord lasts forever.

Judah’s king, though a king, was strictly called to account by the King of kings for this insult to the written word. God noticed what it was in the scroll that angered Jehoiakim. He was offended because it said that the king of Babylon would come and destroy the land (Jeremiah 36:29). But Babylon had already come before this and had already begun to tear the land down (2 Chronicles 36:6-7; Daniel 1:1). So God and His prophets were made into Jehoiakim’s enemies simply because they told him the truth and warned him of coming ruin, while at the same time showing him the way to avoid it.

Since this was the point that troubled him so deeply, let him know this: God’s wrath would come on him and his family first, by the hand of Nebuchadnezzar. He would be cut off, and within a few weeks his son would lose the throne and be taken away in prison clothes, so that none of his line would remain to sit on David’s throne. The glory of that great house would be dimmed and end in him. His dead body would be left without proper burial, or, in effect, buried like a donkey, thrown aside and exposed to the weather, heat, and frost, so that it would rot and become foul more quickly. Not that he would feel the shame after death, but his body in that condition would stand as a terrible sign of God’s wrath to all who saw it. Even his children and servants would suffer because of their closeness to him, though not for his sin, but because they had sins of their own (Jeremiah 36:31).

And all the evil spoken in that scroll against Judah and Jerusalem would come upon them. Even though the copy was burned, the original stood fixed in God’s purpose, and it would be written out again in another form, in the bloody record of judgment. No one can escape God’s judgments by fighting against them. Who ever hardened his heart against God and succeeded?

When the scroll was written again, many more words like the first were added (Jeremiah 36:32). There were more warnings of anger and judgment, because if people keep walking against God, he can make the fire seven times hotter.

The point is clear: God does not change, and no one can force him to do so. He still has more arrows in his quiver. Those who fight against God’s warnings only prepare heavier trouble of the same kind for themselves.