John Calvin Commentary Jeremiah 36:17-18

"And they asked Baruch, saying, Tell us now, How didst thou write all these words at his mouth? Then Baruch answered them, He pronounced all these words unto me with his mouth, and I wrote them with ink in the book." — Jeremiah 36:17-18 (ASV)

The king’s counselors were, no doubt, so astonished when they heard that these threats had been written as the Prophet had dictated them, that they were agitated by different thoughts, as the unbelieving are accustomed to be. Not receiving the heavenly doctrine as they should have, they wavered and could not pursue a consistent course.

Such, then, was the uncertainty that gripped the minds of the princes, for they could hardly believe that these words had been delivered from memory but suspected some trickery, as the unbelieving often imagine such things concerning God’s servants.

They seem to act this way intentionally, so that they might obscure God’s favor, which appears before their eyes. For this purpose, then, they are said to ask Baruch how he recorded the words from the mouth of Jeremiah.

He simply answered that Jeremiah had pronounced these words to him. From this, they might have concluded that Jeremiah had no roll laid before him and that he had not been meditating long on what he communicated to his scribe Baruch.

And though he seems to have said no more than what might satisfy the princes, yet the overall meaning is that Jeremiah did not produce the roll from a hidden place or his desk, but promptly spoke what God’s Spirit suggested to him.

Their astonishment, then, must have increased when the king’s counselors knew that these commands did not proceed from a mortal man, but that, on the contrary, God spoke them by the mouth of Jeremiah and by the hand of Baruch.