God tells Jeremiah to take a scroll and write on it all the words he has spoken against Israel and Judah and all the nations, from the days of Josiah until now. Perhaps the house of Judah will hear and turn. Jeremiah calls Baruch son of Neriah and dictates. Baruch writes.
Jeremiah is banned from the temple, so Baruch goes in his place and reads the scroll to the people on a fast day. The officials hear about it. They send for Baruch and ask him to read it again. He reads it to them in their chamber. They look at one another in fear and say: we must report this to the king.
They tell Baruch: go, hide yourself, you and Jeremiah, and let no one know where you are.
Then they bring the scroll to King Jehoiakim. The king is sitting in his winter house, with a fire burning in the brazier before him. Jehudi reads the scroll.
When Jehudi had read three or four columns, the king would cut them off with a scribe’s knife and throw them into the fire that was in the brazier, until the entire scroll was consumed in the fire that was in the brazier.
Three or four columns. He listens, cuts, burns. Listens, cuts, burns. The destruction is not a single act of rage. It is paced. It follows the reading. Each portion is received and then destroyed, and then the next portion is received and destroyed. The fire in the brazier does not interrupt the reading. The reading does not interrupt the fire.
The text records what did not happen.
The king and all his servants who heard all these words were not afraid, nor did they tear their garments.
Not afraid. The text does not say they did not understand. It does not say they did not hear. Three officials — Elnathan, Delaiah, Gemariah — urged the king not to burn the scroll, and he would not listen. The content was received. The meaning was clear enough that some in the room recognized what was being lost. But the king was not afraid. He heard the words of judgment and responded with the scribe’s knife.
This is not the deafness of Isaiah’s commission, where the prophet is sent to make hearing fail. The hearing succeeds here. The king hears every column before he cuts it. His destruction is the form his reception takes.
Then the word of the Lord comes to Jeremiah: take another scroll and write on it all the former words that were on the first scroll, which Jehoiakim king of Judah burned.
Then Jeremiah took another scroll and gave it to Baruch the scribe, son of Neriah, who wrote on it at the dictation of Jeremiah all the words of the scroll that Jehoiakim king of Judah had burned in the fire. And many similar words were added to them.
Many similar words were added. The second scroll is not a copy. It is larger than the first. The destruction did not merely fail to eliminate the message. It expanded it. What was dictated the second time included everything that was burned and then more of the same kind. Similar words — not different words, not a revised argument, not a retraction, not a threat about the burning. More of what was already there.
The king tried to reduce the message by fire, column by column, at the pace of reading. The response was not restoration but increase. The scroll that emerges from the destruction contains more than the scroll that entered it.
The chapter does not explain why the addition occurred. It does not say the new words were punishment for the burning or a response to the king’s defiance. It says: many similar words were added. The fact is stated. The mechanism is silence.