In Jeremiah 36, the prophet consciously describes the reception of God’s Word, its inscripturation, and its reception. This chapter is invaluable for us today for its “meta-prophetic” perspective on Jeremiah’s ministry in particular but also on the relationship between God’s word in spoken and written form. To be sure, Jeremiah 36 is not the first time that there is a reflection on the writing down of God’s Word that ultimately becomes Scripture. In the book of Deuteronomy, there are points when the book itself consciously acknowledges that it is the written form of Moses’ farewell speeches to the people on the plains of Moab. But Jeremiah 36 very well may be the most self-conscious example of the movement from the prophet to the Scriptures. With that in mind, Andrew Shead lays out the significance of this meta-prophetic perspective:
In short, Deuteronomy’s conception of written words is taken up and extended by Jeremiah, in which words initially spoken are written down so as to last into the future. By lasting they will stand to bear witness to the truth and faithfulness of God when his words come to be fulfilled. By being read out they expose listeners to the possibility of hearing the word of the Lord, even in the absence of the prophet who speaks and embodies the word that came to him from the Lord. They allow the hearers to encounter the prophet in his literary persona, to receive his prophetic ministry, to observe his person and works as well as his words. All these themes come together in one of the most important sustained treatments of enscripturation in the Bible, Jeremiah 36.[1]
Expanding on this idea and more tightly connecting the written word with the spoken word, Shead notes that prepositions can sometimes help us appreciate the significance of what a text is teaching us. He focuses on Jer 36:10-11 (ESV): “Then, in the hearing of all the people, Baruch read the words of Jeremiah from the scroll, in the house of the LORD, in the chamber of Gemariah the son of Shaphan the secretary, which was in the upper court, at the entry of the New Gate of the LORD's house. 11 When Micaiah the son of Gemariah, son of Shaphan, heard all the words of the LORD from the scroll…” Comparing the reading and hearing of Jeremiah’s scroll, Shead notes that
There is a curious variation in the preposition used with the scroll at the point of reading and the point of hearing. While the prepositions in question each have a wide range of meaning, a strong case can be made for the above translation. Baruch read the words ‘in’ the scroll, or perhaps ‘by means of’ the scroll; but Gemariah heard the words ‘from’ or ‘coming from’ the scroll. The implication of this is that writing was conceived of as an act of catching spoken words, like butterflies in a net, and that reading was the act of releasing those words from their written form to be heard once again.[2]
Now, we know that the impact of these words is varied such that some hear them and respond with faith and repentance while others hear them and hardly respond at all. Nevertheless, the same word is spoken, which is the same word that was originally proclaimed. There is an organic continuity between the ministries of Jeremiah, Jesus, and Paul, and our reception of their words so many centuries later.
My hope with this reflection is that we would appreciate all the more how the Scriptures are by no means a dead letter. I also hope that we might see the Scriptures as less of an abstraction or an object for dispassionate study. With our sanctified imaginations, and equipped with the meta-prophetic perspective of Jeremiah 36, we should be able to engage our whole selves in the reading of God’s Word, for we are better able to appreciate that no Scripture was written in a laboratory or in a vacuum, divorced from the very same pressures, hopes, and trials that we face even today.
[1] Andrew G. Shead, A Mouth Full of Fire: The Word of God in the Words of Jeremiah, New Studies in Biblical Theology 29 (Downers Grove, Ill: Apollos, 2012), 236.
[2] Shead, A Mouth Full of Fire, 239–40.
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