John Gill Commentary Jeremiah 36

And it came to pass in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of
Josiah king of Judah
Eighteen years before the destruction of Jerusalem: [that] this word came to Jeremiah from theLord ;
giving the following order to write in a roll all his prophecies he had hitherto delivered:saying ;
as follows:

Take thee a roll of a book
A roll of parchment, which being wrote on, and rolled up, was called a book; but books, in those times, did not consist of leaves cut and stitched together, and bound up, as our books are, but sheets of parchments being written upon, were glued together, and then rolled up; hence such writings were called volumes; which name we still retain, and give to books, though the same practice is not used:

and write therein all the words that I have spoken unto thee against
Israel, and against Judah ;
for though Israel was carried captive before the times of Jeremiah, and his prophecies were chiefly directed against Judah; yet as there were some of the ten tribes mixed with them, they were included in these prophecies, and therefore mentioned: and against all the nations ;
such as Egypt, Edom, Ammon, and Moab, (Jeremiah 9:26) ;

from the day that I spoke unto thee, from the days of Josiah, even unto
this day ;
that is, from the time the Lord called him to prophesy in his name, which was in the thirteenth year of Josiah, who reigned thirty-one years; and this being the fourth year of Jehoiakim, it must be the twenty-third year of his prophesying, and a course of full twenty-two years; see (Jeremiah 1:2) (25:3) ; now all the sermons, discourses, and prophecies, he had delivered out against one and another, during this time, must all be written in one roll or book, that they might be read.

Kimchi says their Rabbins ^F14 would have it that this roll was the book of the Lamentations, called by them "Megallah", or roll.

FOOTNOTES:

• F14: T. Bab. Moed Katon fol. 26. 1.

It may be that the house of Judah will hear all the evil which I purpose to do unto them Not that there was any uncertainty in God as to the knowledge of future events, any more than a change in his purposes: he had purposed to bring evil upon them, which purpose would not be disannulled; and he knew that the Jews would not hearken to the prediction of it, or be concerned about it, and repent of their sins, and reform; but this method he was pleased to take, as being, humanly speaking, a probable one to awaken their attention, and which would leave them inexcusable:

that they may return every man from his evil way ; repent of it, and reform:

that I may forgive their iniquity and their sin ; by not inflicting on them the punishment and ruin threatened: where repentance is, remission of sin is likewise, and both are the gifts of divine grace, when spiritual and evangelical.

Then Jeremiah called Baruch the son of Neriah One of his disciples, and whom he had before made use of in the purchase of a field of his uncle's son, and to whom he gave the evidence of the purchase, (Jeremiah 32:12) ; he was probably a better penman than the prophet, or a quicker writer; however, he thought proper, for quicker dispatch, to make use of him as his amanuensis:

and Baruch wrote from the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of the Lord , which he had spoken unto him, upon a roll of a book ; it seems that Jeremiah had not committed any of his prophecies to writing; and yet it cannot be thought that by the mere strength of memory he could repeat every discourse and prophecy he had delivered in the space of two and twenty years; wherefore it must be concluded, that that same Spirit, which first dictated the prophecies to him, brought them fresh to his memory; so that he could readily repeat them to Baruch, who took them down in writing on a roll of parchment.

And Jeremiah commanded Baruch, saying, I [am] shut up
In prison, according to Jarchi; but this is not likely, for then there would have been no occasion for an order to take him, (Jeremiah 36:26) . Grotius thinks he was obliged by the king's order to stay at home; possibly he might be restrained by the Spirit of God, or had not freedom in his own mind to go abroad; there might be a restraint, an impulse upon his spirit, by the Spirit of God. Some think he was under some legal pollution, which made him unfit to go into the temple: for it follows: I cannot go into the house of the Lord :
labouring either under some bodily infirmity, or ceremonial defilement, or was forbidden by the king. What was the true cause is not certain; but so it was, that either he was discharged, or disabled, or disqualified, from going into the house of God.