Scripture Daily

Context No. 133 of 4322 · Baruch

Context · Reflection

Baruch 2:11-18: in context

11And now, O Lord, you God of Israel who have brought your people out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand, with signs, with wonders, with great power, and with a high arm, and have gotten yourself a name, as at this day: 12O Lord our God, we have sinned. We have been ungodly. We have done wrong in all your ordinances. 13Let your wrath turn from us, for we are but a few left among the heathen where you have scattered us. 14Hear our prayer, O Lord, and our petition, and deliver us for your own sake. Give us favor in the sight of those who have led us away captive, 15that all the earth may know that you are the Lord our God, because Israel and his posterity is called by your name. 16O Lord, look down from your holy house and consider us. Incline your ear, O Lord, and hear. 17Open your eyes, and see; for the dead that are in Hades, whose breath is taken from their bodies, will give to the Lord neither glory nor righteousness; 18but the soul who is greatly vexed, who goes stooping and feeble, and the eyes that fail, and the hungry soul, will declare your glory and righteousness, O Lord.

Baruch is a short book in the Catholic Bible, presented as the work of Jeremiah's secretary, written for exiles in Babylon to read aloud at their gatherings. This passage is the center of its long confession.

The prayer starts where Israel's prayers usually start, with the exodus: you brought your people out of Egypt with a mighty hand and signs and wonders, and made yourself a name that lasts to this day. Then the confession, with no qualifiers: we have sinned, we have been ungodly, we have done wrong in all your ordinances. Then the request, and its ground: hear our prayer and deliver us for your own sake. Not because we deserve it. Because of your name.

Then a line that catches: the dead who are in the grave, whose spirit is taken from their bodies, will give the Lord neither glory nor justice. It is the living, and the deeply grieved, who give glory. The prayer argues that God should act because only people still alive can praise him, and it puts forward the person bowed down and failing, whose eyes are weak and whose soul is hungry, as the one whose praise counts. It offers weakness as the qualification. When I pray from a bad stretch, do I try to sound stronger than I am, and who told me that was the version worth bringing?

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