Baruch 1:1

New Catholic Bible

Footnotes

1. Baruch 1:1 This scenario, which explains the origin of the Book, may have been inspired by the episode of Baruch reading the prophecies before the court at Jerusalem (see Jer 36). However, it is an artificial composition and confuses the dates of known chronology. According to Jer 43:6f, Baruch was taken into Egypt with his master. A later Jewish tradition, however, placed him in Babylonia. This Book imagines him to be in Babylonia at the modest court of King Jeconiah (or Jehoiachin), who was freed from prison in 561 B.C. (see 2 Ki 25:27; Jer 52:31-34), thirty-five years after his deportation. Verse 11 recalls a prince Belshazzar at the time of Nebuchadnezzar; we know of a prince by that name, but he lived at the time of the fall of Babylon in 539 B.C.