1. In the fourth year of Judah’s King Jehoiakim, Josiah’s son, this word came to Jeremiah from the Lord:
2. Take a scroll and write in it all the words I have spoken to you concerning Israel, Judah, and all the nations from the time of Josiah until today.
3. Perhaps when the people of Judah hear about every disaster I intend to bring upon them, they will turn from their evil ways, and I will forgive their wrongdoing and sins.
4. So Jeremiah sent for Baruch, Neriah’s son. As Jeremiah dictated all the words that the Lord had spoken to him, Baruch wrote them in the scroll.
5. Then Jeremiah told Baruch, "I’m confined here and can’t go to the Lord’s temple.
6. So you go to the temple on the next day of fasting, and read the Lord’s words from the scroll that I have dictated to you. Read them so that all the people in the temple can hear them, as well as all the Judeans who have come from their towns.
7. If they turn from their evil ways, perhaps the Lord will hear their prayers. The Lord has threatened them with fierce anger."
8. Baruch, Neriah’s son, did everything the prophet Jeremiah instructed him: he read all the Lord’s words from the scroll in the temple.
9. In the ninth month of the fifth year of Judah’s King Jehoiakim, Josiah’s son, all the people in Jerusalem and all those who had come from Judean towns observed a fast for the Lord in Jerusalem.
10. Then Baruch read Jeremiah’s words from the scroll to all the people in the Lord’s temple; he read them in the chamber of Gemariah, Shaphan the scribe’s son, in the upper courtyard near the entrance of the New Gate of the Lord’s temple.