Jeremiah 36:17
“They asked Baruch, saying, “Tell us now, how did you write all these words at his mouth?””
What does Jeremiah 36:17 mean?
When the officials of King Jehoiakim's court found the scroll containing Jeremiah's prophecies, they wanted to understand how it came to be. They asked Baruch, the scribe who had written down the words, whether Jeremiah had dictated them to him or if Baruch had composed them himself. This simple question reveals something important: they were trying to gauge the authority of the message—was this truly the word of the prophet, or something Baruch had invented? It also shows their suspicion that an oral message had been carefully recorded, which made it harder to ignore or dismiss than a casual statement would be.