Lives of Scripture

Jehudi, son of Nethaniah, was a royal official in Jerusalem during the reign of King Jehoiakim. When Baruch, Jeremiah's scribe, read aloud in the temple the scroll of judgments Jeremiah had dictated, the alarmed officials sent Jehudi to fetch Baruch and the scroll so they could hear it themselves (Jeremiah 36:14). After hearing it, they sent Jehudi to read it again, this time before King Jehoiakim, who was sitting by a fire in his winter house (36:20-21). As Jehudi read, column by column, the king cut each section off with a scribe's knife and threw it into the brazier, until the entire scroll was consumed -- showing no fear despite his officials' warning (36:22-24). Neither the king nor those with him tore their clothes in repentance, unlike Josiah a generation earlier when he heard God's law (compare 2 Kings 22:11). Jehudi himself is simply the messenger and reader in this account, carrying out his masters' orders, but his role puts him at the center of one of Scripture's starkest pictures of royal defiance: a king who thought he could destroy God's word by burning the paper it was written on. The LORD immediately had Jeremiah dictate the scroll again, "and many similar words were added" (36:32), including a specific judgment against Jehoiakim for the act.