Bible Strands
Jeremiah 36:17
“Tell us now,” they asked Baruch, “how did you write all these words? Was it at Jeremiah’s dictation?”
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The royal officials speak to Baruch immediately after hearing the prophetic warnings and resolving to report them to the king. They interrupt their own plan to demand an explanation of the scroll’s origin.
The words — The officials press Baruch with אֵ֗יךְ ('Eikh) how and כָּתַ֛בְתָּ (ka.Tav.ta) whether he wrote the document. These verbs isolate the mechanical process of recording the message rather than its content.
The thread — Interrogators demanding a source for a divine act recur in John 9:10, 15, and 26, where Pharisees question how Jesus opened blind eyes. Both passages feature authorities testing the provenance of a miraculous work before accepting it.
Why it lands — The verse requires a reader to confirm the human agency behind the biblical text. It demands verification that the scroll emerged from a prophet’s speech and a scribe’s ink, not from independent authorship.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
And they asked Baruch, saying, Tell us now, How didst thou write all these words at his mouth?