Baruch 2:11-35

Revised Standard Version

Prayer for Deliverance

¹¹ “‘And now, O Lord God of Israel, who didst bring thy people out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand and with signs and wonders and with great power and outstretched arm, and hast made thee a name, as at this day, ¹² we have sinned, we have been ungodly, we have done wrong, O Lord our God, against all thy ordinances. ¹³ Let thy anger turn away from us, for we are left, few in number, among the nations where thou hast scattered us. ¹⁴ Hear, O Lord, our prayer and our supplication, and for thy own sake deliver us, and grant us favor in the sight of those who have carried us into exile; ¹⁵ that all the earth may know that thou art the Lord our God, for Israel and his descendants are called by thy name. ¹⁶ O Lord, look down from thy holy habitation, and consider us. Incline thy ear, O Lord, and hear; ¹⁷ open thy eyes, O Lord, and see; for the dead who are in Hades, whose spirit has been taken from their bodies, will not ascribe glory or justice to the Lord, ¹⁸ but the person that is greatly distressed,^[a] that goes about bent over and feeble, and the eyes that are failing, and the person that hungers, will ascribe to thee glory and righteousness, O Lord. ¹⁹ For it is not because of any righteous deeds of our fathers or our kings that we bring before thee our prayer for mercy, O Lord our God. ²⁰ For thou hast sent thy anger and thy wrath upon us, as thou didst declare by thy servants the prophets, saying: ²¹ “Thus says the Lord: Bend your shoulders and serve the king of Babylon, and you will remain in the land which I gave to your fathers. ²² But if you will not obey the voice of the Lord and will not serve the king of Babylon, ²³ I will make to cease from the cities of Judah and from the region about Jerusalem the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, and the whole land will be a desolation without inhabitants.”

²⁴ “‘But we did not obey thy voice, to serve the king of Babylon; and thou hast confirmed thy words, which thou didst speak by thy servants the prophets, that the bones of our kings and the bones of our fathers would be brought out of their graves;^{[b] 25} and behold, they have been cast out to the heat of day and the frost of night. They perished in great misery, by famine and sword and pestilence. ²⁶ And the house which is called by thy name thou hast made as it is today, because of the wickedness of the house of Israel and the house of Judah.

God’s Promise Recalled

²⁷ “‘Yet thou hast dealt with us, O Lord our God, in all thy kindness and in all thy great compassion, ²⁸ as thou didst speak by thy servant Moses on the day when thou didst command him to write thy law in the presence of the people of Israel, saying, ²⁹ “If you will not obey my voice, this very great multitude will surely turn into a small number among the nations, where I will scatter them. ³⁰ For I know that they will not obey me, for they are a stiff-necked people. But in the land of their exile they will come to themselves, ³¹ and they will know that I am the Lord their God. I will give them a heart that obeys and ears that hear; ³² and they will praise me in the land of their exile, and will remember my name, ³³ and will turn from their stubbornness and their wicked deeds; for they will remember the ways of their fathers, who sinned before the Lord. ³⁴ I will bring them again into the land which I swore to give to their fathers, to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob, and they will rule over it; and I will increase them, and they will not be diminished. ³⁵ I will make an everlasting covenant with them to be their God and they shall be my people; and I will never again remove my people Israel from the land which I have given them.”