Some words are best heard. Some words are best written. How do we consume the content that speaks directly to our heart, or soul, or mind? The medium is the message and it matters who and how important messages reach our lives.
Jeremiah knew this and developed a new form of communication that was likely part of the zeitgeist of his time.
He wasn’t alone in his final refuge days in Egypt. The elder prophet was accompanied by Baruch ben Neriah, his loyal scribe/secretary/sidekick who was quite a character in his own right and would one day author his own book - The Book of Baruch - though it would not enter the official biblical canon.
But Baruch was not just a scribe. His role and presence in this story represents one of the most dramatic shifts in the evolution of human culture - as echoed in today’s chapter. It’s the shift from the oral transmission of messages and ideas -- to the obsession with writing it all down.
Notice this first verse of today’s chapter, taking us back in time to safer and more prosperous days in Jerusalem, as King Jehoiakim sits on the throne:
הַדָּבָ֗ר אֲשֶׁ֤ר דִּבֶּר֙ יִרְמְיָ֣הוּ הַנָּבִ֔יא אֶל־בָּר֖וּךְ בֶּן־נֵרִיָּ֑ה בְּכׇתְבוֹ֩ אֶת־הַדְּבָרִ֨ים הָאֵ֤לֶּה עַל־סֵ֙פֶר֙ מִפִּ֣י יִרְמְיָ֔הוּ בַּשָּׁנָה֙ הָרְבִעִ֔ית לִיהוֹיָקִ֧ים בֶּן־יֹאשִׁיָּ֛הוּ מֶ֥לֶךְ יְהוּדָ֖ה לֵאמֹֽר׃
“The word that the prophet Jeremiah spoke to Baruch son of Neriah, when he was writing these words in a scroll at Jeremiah’s dictation, in the fourth year of King Jehoiakim son of Josiah of Judah”
Jeremiah.45.1
The relationship between written and oral societies is a recurring theme in Jeremiah’s world -- very much the sign of the times for the shift from Assyrian to Babylonian and later Persian cultures.
This opening line of chapter 45 offers a clear difference, even if they complete each other -- between the spoken and written word -- Jeremiah talks, maybe dictates -- Baruch writes it down, and at least in one case - is the spokesperson to deliver the message.
On some level, this chapter of Jeremiah is a watershed moment, a shift between the era of the oral word and the new era in which words become written text.
During the First Temple time period writing was used only on special occasions. But Jeremiah’s first moments post the destruction of the First Temple - a new era - sees the use of writing become much more prominent. Remember Isaiah - he hears God’s voice speaking to the angels. But for Ezekiel - coming up next - a post-first-temple prophet - the visions include him reading a scroll. There are several more examples that cleary point at this cultural shift which is much more than technology. They are also about geography. Is there a link between the shift from spoken to written - and the move from the land of Israel to the exiles of Babylon and Egypt? As the diaspora experience becomes more prominent for the lives of more Judeans so would the use of written words, both for communication and for inspiration, revelation and news.
Maybe the need to communicate across more territory embraced the tools that transform conversations within earshot to correspondence through scrolls?
The shift is also in the forms of prophecy. From that day on, it would seem that prophets do not speak their visions at the city gates to the few gathered but insead become the sages and scholars who broadcast traditions - through written words. Maybe, in some way, this chapter is the invitation to us becoming first ‘the people of the scroll’ and eventually, ‘the people of the book?’
And yet, even the written word is only powerful when it conveys the human voice and echoes what it feels like to actually hear - and feel - what’s being written as if sitting in the same space.
Jeremiah addresses Baruch in this chapter and quotes his scribe’s sigh - his actual Oy:
אָמַ֙רְתָּ֙ אֽוֹי־נָ֣א לִ֔י כִּֽי־יָסַ֧ף יְהֹוָ֛ה יָג֖וֹן עַל־מַכְאֹבִ֑י יָגַ֙עְתִּי֙ בְּאַנְחָתִ֔י וּמְנוּחָ֖ה לֹ֥א מָצָֽאתִי׃
“You say, “Woe is me! YHWH has added grief to my pain. I am worn out with groaning, and I have found no rest.”
Jeremiah 45:3
This would be the test of texts that make a difference, that manage to move us from information to transformation - can we hear the sigh through the letters?
Can we echo the groaning that reaches our heart?
Of course.
That’s how Jeremiah is still known thousands of years later. That’s why the Bible, like all great literature, read aloud, listened to, spoken and silent, reminds us how to listen to the deepest layers of our lives.
Today we hear the groan of the scribe from Jerusalem, and we sigh alongside, sharing the pains of then and now. We pray for healing, hope, peace and compassion for everyone, everywhere, in every way that helps.
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I happen to be reading "The Muse Learns to Write: Reflections on Orality and Literacy from Antiquity to the Present" by Eric Havelock. It is rich in its understanding of the transition from the oral to the written culture---using Greece as its test case---and for any of our cohort interested in what you rightly describe as "one of the most dramatic shifts in human culture," this book will delight.